


And I'm Your Lionheart

by Lee_Whimsy



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-25 06:12:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 71,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/635948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lee_Whimsy/pseuds/Lee_Whimsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo lingers in Erebor while Thorin recovers from his wounds, and soon finds himself caught up in politics, romance, and the occasional kidnapping. Ensemble cast. AU. Eventually Thorin/Bilbo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Battle of Five Armies

When Bilbo woke, the world around him was jumbled and uncertain.  The first time he opened his eyes the pain was enough to split him in two. For a long dizzy moment he thought he would pass out again—it would be so easy, easier than breathing, to sink back into the soft, comfortable darkness.

No. He wouldn't go quietly. His Tookish half, contrary and reckless as ever, was still hot with the violence of battle, and he had a dim notion that there was something he needed to do: something important. He clung to consciousness, heart beating stubbornly in his bruised, aching chest. Everything hurt.

Little by little, he took stock of his situation. Grey clouds hung low in the sky, and the little daylight that remained was fading fast.  It was eerily silent; he could hear nothing but the wind, which blew small flurries of ice and snow down from the heights, tugging at his matted hair and stinging his face and hands. The Lonely Mountain loomed above him like a specter, though he could only see the utmost peak. He was trapped in a wasteland of rocky slopes, with the dead scattered around in heaps of rent flesh and broken bones.

He staggered to his feet. He'd seen elves and dwarves alike torn apart in the battle, the bodies hewn where they lay, but no trace of them remained. The only corpses he saw were goblins, their mounts broken underneath them or dead nearby. One of the Wargs had been cut down only a few feet away from him: entrails torn out and trailing, its eyes glassy and its mouth open in a frozen snarl.  Bilbo glanced at it only briefly as he scanned the battlefield for more familiar figures. There were none.

Had any of his friends or allies survived the battle? Perhaps he was the only one left. He remembered how the goblins had swarmed the mountain and the slopes, thousands upon thousands of them, overwhelming the dwarves of the Iron Hills and breaking through the ranks of Thranduil's personal guard. It was there that Bilbo had decided to make his last stand.  He must have been knocked unconscious soon after. The last thing he remembered was watching in horror as a young warrior in full armor, his face pale and desperate, threw himself in front of the king to shield him from a fatal blow. Surely Thranduil and the rest had been killed, and Bilbo left for dead in the carnage. But where were the bodies?

He shivered and drew the remains of his cloak more closely around himself. Presently he decided that he would make for the mountain, and he began to walk, legs almost giving out underneath him. He'd last seen Thorin and the rest of the Company fighting at the walls, and the goblins would have made a triumph of Thorin's body where he'd fallen. If Bilbo was going to die in this miserable place, he would die near his king. It was the least he owed him, after stealing the Arkenstone and handing it over to their enemies, no less a betrayal because he'd had the best of intentions. He'd thought he would rather be hated by Thorin than mourn him, but the dwarves had been right at the beginning.  It would have been better for all of them if he had never left the Shire.

He trudged on, one foot in front of the other, in as straight a line as the rough landscape would allow.  He had no sense of time, but eventually he realized that the snow was falling harder, and that the wind had dropped an octave. There was something else, too—something beneath the wind. A voice? He strained, trying to make it out more clearly.

"Bilbo!" The call was faint, almost swept away by the gathering storm. "Bilbo!"

Hope leaped suddenly in his chest. He stumbled towards the sound. "I'm here!" he shouted. "Over here!"  There was no response. Nothing. But someone had been calling his name, he was certain of it, and he looked around wildly as he hurried forward. 

A familiar shape loomed suddenly out of the gathering dark. Bilbo stopped dead in his tracks.  "Bofur?"

The dwarf looked terrible. His normally ruddy face was waxen, his arm and left side swathed with bandages, and a deep gash across his forehead had turned his face into a mess of dirt and crusted blood. He was alive, though, and none of the rest mattered compared to that. Bilbo reached out to embrace him, but Bofur stared ahead, unseeing.

"Bilbo? Damn and blast, hobbit, where are you?"

"I'm right here!"  Why couldn't he see him? They were only a few paces apart. What could possibly—

—oh.

The Ring, of course.

Bilbo didn't remember putting it on, but there it was, gleaming dully, untouched by any dirt or blood. He yanked it off his finger. So that was why he'd been abandoned on the battlefield!

"I'm here," he said, shoving the contemptible thing into his pocket.

Bofur leapt backwards, staring as if he was seeing a ghost.  "By Aulë, it is you," he said, and swept Bilbo up into a tight embrace. "I thought I was going mad. We'd taken you for dead, but we couldn't find your body. Balin sent me out to search one last time."

Bilbo could hardly breathe, and not just because Bofur was holding him far too tightly. It was too much, all of it. He had resigned himself to a lonely, friendless death, either on the battlefield or in the wilderness beyond. A comforting embrace, a familiar voice—did such things still exist?  After a long moment Bofur pulled away, and Bilbo's mind began to catch up with him.

"Sent out?  So some of the others survived. What happened? Where's Thorin? Did—"

"We carried the day," said Bofur. He didn't sound triumphant. "The rest can wait. Can you walk?"

Bilbo nodded, a little frantically.  "I was headed toward the mountain when you found me."

"Good. I don't have the strength to carry you, and it might already be too late."

"Too late for what?  What's happened?"

Bofur's only response was to grab him by the arm and set off, Bilbo stumbling along beside him.  It was all he could do to keep up, much less demand answers to his questions. 

They were still boxed in by uneven ground, picking a path through the bodies and wreckage, but it was clear that they were headed toward the mountain. As they drew close, the first signs of life began to appear.  Night had fallen, but an eerie red glow lit the air.  Voices rose and fell in the distance, carried on the wind along with acrid smoke that burned Bilbo's nostrils. 

Then they were standing atop the last of the rocky slopes, the mountain entirely visible at last. Spread out before them were the scorched plains where the fiercest fighting had taken place, and where the victorious armies had camped.  Here and there funeral pyres burned red and roaring, columns of black smoke glowing with sparks and mingling with the falling snow. There were hundreds of torches, too, bright enough that Bilbo could make out the standards raised over the battlefield. Thranduil, Dain, Thorin, the men of Esgaroth—all four banners flew high.  They started down the hillside toward the encampment. Bofur was half-dragging him now, his uninjured hand wrapped around Bilbo's arm tightly enough to bruise. 

Balin appeared out the darkness, striding up to meet them. His armor was gouged and black with soot, and his face was grim.  "You've found him," he said.

"Is there time?" Bofur asked.

"Yes. But hurry."

Bilbo and Bofur pressed on. Faces passed in a blur, elves and dwarves and men alike. Bilbo thought he recognized some of them, but the torchlight made everything look strange and savage. Above the clamor of voices there was the crackling of the fires and the howl of the storm.

He could see their destination now. A hastily-erected pavilion stood a little apart from the rest of the encampment, near the charred and ruined gates that led into the mountain. Guards stood at the entrance: dwarves of the Iron Hills.  Two or three were openly weeping.

"Please," Bilbo said, a terrible suspicion in his mind.  "What's going on?"

Bofur didn't meet his eyes.  "The battle was won," he said as they stepped inside. "But Thorin is dying."


	2. My Heart Next to Yours

Inside the pavilion everything was still and quiet.  Bilbo stood at the entrance. He couldn't move. He could barely breathe.

Thorin lay surrounded by furs and blankets, his chest swathed in bandages that were already soaked through with blood. His weapons and ruined armor had been shoved into a corner.  Azog's mace, on top of the pile, was crusted with gore.  Bilbo tried not to imagine the damage it had done to Thorin's body. 

He was speaking with a dwarf that Bilbo didn't recognize, and hadn't yet noticed their arrival. The stranger shook his head and frowned, but Thorin was clearly unmoved by whatever arguments he was making.  

"You're the only one he's asked for," Bofur said quietly.  "It's been hours, and he's wanted nothing else." 

Just then, Thorin looked up and met Bilbo's gaze, his eyes dark with some sudden emotion.  "Leave us, cousin," he said. "And you, Bofur. Go and see to my nephews."  He ignored their protests. Soon he and Bilbo were alone, both silent.  How could it be, after everything, that they had nothing to say to one another? Bilbo wanted nothing more than to rush forward and take Thorin's hands in his own, but the memory of their last encounter lingered between them, and he stayed where he was.

"They told me you were dead," Thorin said at last. He spoke slowly and deliberately, his voice ragged with pain.

"They tell me you're dying," said Bilbo.

"Will you mourn?" Thorin asked, and took Bilbo's silence for denial. "I almost killed you at our last parting.  It was too much to expect your forgiveness."

"No, I do," said Bilbo.  The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. "I do forgive you. You were angry. I knew you would be. I couldn't stand the thought of you dying, that's all, not with the dragon gone and you home at last.  So I took the Arkenstone. But it's all gone so horribly wrong, and—and I know it's a silly thing to ask, but please don't die. For me. Don't die."

Thorin stared at him, inscrutable. "Time and time again I misjudge you," he said. "And here you are to prove me wrong one last time. Would you sit beside me?"

It was the gentlest request Bilbo had ever heard from him.  He made to kneel down, but his legs gave out before he could manage it, and he half-collapsed at Thorin's side.

"You're wounded," Thorin said, and tried to sit up, but he only fell back against the blankets, chest heaving.

"I'm perfectly fine," Bilbo said hastily. "Don't worry about me!"

Thorin, impossibly, began to laugh.  It was a ragged, awful sound.  "As stubborn as any dwarf," he said. "What a pair we make. And I said that you had no place in my company."

They fell silent again, but this was a better kind of silence. The furs piled around Thorin felt impossibly soft; Bilbo leaned into them, gravitating towards the comfort and warmth of Thorin's body. He was so very tired, and Thorin was dying. It occurred to Bilbo that it would be quite nice if he could just fall asleep and never wake up.

"Your hair is tangled," he said, a little while later. "And your braids are all undone."

Thorin made a small noise of agreement. "I imagine they are."

"I could fix them for you. If you'd like."

Silence.

"It doesn't matter," Bilbo said, his cheeks flushing red. "I didn't mean—"

"It would be a kindness," said Thorin.

Bilbo's hands trembled as he began to work the knots out, trying not to think about whose blood, precisely, was matted in Thorin's hair.  Soon his mind drifted, his fingers moving automatically.  He thought of the battle, of the long road back to Hobbiton, of the nuisance of braiding without ties to keep the hair in place.  He thought of the Arkenstone, and the soft silver glow of the mithril coat that Thorin gave him: both impossibly precious, and bought at far too dear a price.  Would it have been better if Gandalf had never stopped beside his gate and the dwarves had never set out to reclaim their birthright?

Somehow Bilbo couldn't imagine Thorin living out his days as a blacksmith, or as the leader of a scattered and homeless people. He was a child of Durin.  He had dragged the rest of them along in his wake, fighting the world for every inch of ground, no less his grandfather's heir for want of a throne.  It was only right that he die a king, just as his forefathers had.

Had anyone asked, Bilbo would have said he was too tired to cry. The tears came regardless.  If Thorin noticed, he said nothing, and by the time Bilbo finished his self-appointed task, his cheeks were dry. Thorin soon fell into a fitful sleep; Bilbo curled up at his side, dagger close at hand, but no sooner had he settled down than his eyes were closing of their own accord.  He dreamed that was back in Bag End, hurrying from room to room, tracing routes across old maps and looking for something that he'd long since misplaced.

When he woke, Thorin was delirious: sometimes silent, sometimes speaking in an incomprehensible mix of Khuzdul and the common tongue.  Bilbo sent the guards to fetch a healer. "I'm here," he said, over and over again, while he waited for someone to arrive. "I'm here."

* * *

Dain and his healers came and went.  They said it was only a matter of time.

"You're just going to leave him?"  Bilbo demanded.  "There must be something you can do! You ought to be here when he wakes, at least."

"If he wakes again, the rest of his followers will say their farewells," said one of the dwarves. "We all grieve for Thorin Oakenshield, hobbit, but we cannot save him. Should we leave others to die while we fret over his body?"

Bilbo glowered at them from his place at Thorin's side. They were right. That was worst of it.  The battle had been ugly; whenever the wind died down he could hear the groans and screams of the wounded carrying across the encampment. It was foolish to waste time on lost causes, but this was Thorin! Surely a rightful king, an heir of Durin, deserved better than that.  Bilbo wanted to stamp his feet and demand that the healers stay with Thorin no matter how hopeless it was, and no matter the cost. 

It was an awful, selfish thought.  He didn't regret it.

"My cousin made his wishes clear," Dain said. "Your loyalty does you credit, but he is hurt beyond our power to heal. Even your wizard said so."

Bilbo bit back an angry retort, and the dwarves left soon after. Dain clapped him on the shoulder as he passed. 

He wasn't left alone for long.  A steady stream of dwarves, some of them members of the Company and some unfamiliar, appeared in the pavilion, despite the time of night and injuries of their own. Bofur sat with him for a while, and Ori fluttered in occasionally to ask if there was anything he could do.  Bilbo paid them little attention. Something was nagging at him; something Dain had said. 

_He is hurt beyond our power to heal._

Perhaps, once again, his Tookish side kept him from giving up and accepting the inevitable. Or perhaps the sight of Thorin, unarmed and shivering, reminded Bilbo too much of their first escape from Azog.  Bilbo had protected him then, and whether by courage or fool's luck, Thorin had survived.  They'd all survived. 

The next time Ori appeared, Bilbo asked him to take a message to someone. "It's for Thorin," he said, when Ori hesitated. "It's important."

Ori nodded and limped out as quickly as he could. Time dragged by.  Bilbo waited, impatience warring with exhaustion. The world brightened around him even as the storm picked up again, and a strong gust of wind shook the canvas walls of the pavilion, small flurries of snow slipping in through the gaps. Soon it would be dawn.  Bilbo shivered.  Likely Thorin was too far gone to notice, but just in case, Bilbo pulled off his tattered cloak and tucked it securely around him, careful not to disturb his bandages.

Raised voices outside caught Bilbo's attention.  He pressed a kiss to Thorin's brow before investigating.  "What's going on?" he asked, sticking his head outside of the pavilion for the first time since the early evening. "Is something the matter?"

"Nothing for you to worry about," one of the guards assured him. "We'll handle it."

"On the contrary," said the tall, blond figure standing opposite the guards, "My presence is far more the halfling's concern than yours."

Bilbo's eyes widened.  "King Thranduil," he said, bowing as deeply as his bruised ribs would allow. It had worked! His message had actually worked! "It's all right," he told the guards. "I asked him to come.  For Thorin."  

Dain's soldiers weren't nearly as comforted by that declaration as Ori had been, but after much grumbling and several suspicious glances they let Thranduil pass.  Bilbo sketched another quick bow. "I, er.  Please come in, your highness. Sir."

The expression on Thranduil's face could have been a smile or a grimace.  "You summoned me here on behalf of Thorin Oakenshield," he said as they stepped inside. "What should I care for a dwarf who rallied his kin to do battle against me?"

"Thorin is a king," Bilbo said, "just as you are.  And he fell in battle beside his soldiers.  Beside your soldiers, too.  Now he's dying."

"And?  You will be disappointed if you expect me to apologize for wrongs I never committed, or to honor an undeserving fool with my friendship, even on his deathbed.  Your king fought for nothing but wealth and the satisfaction of his own vanity.  Have you anything else to say?"

"Gandalf told me once that Lord Elrond is a great healer," Bilbo said, his hands clenched so hard that his fingers ached. "And your captain helped Kíli in Laketown.  I thought, perhaps—"

"You thought that an elven healer might save him."

Bilbo nodded, forcing himself to meet Thranduil's cold, impersonal gaze. Once he would have been afraid of such a great and terrible king. Not anymore.

"And what makes you think I will grant such a favor?" Thranduil said. 

"You're not heartless," Bilbo said, desperate.  This was Thorin's last chance, he knew.  "I saw you during the battle.  You suffered for your soldiers.  You tried to protect them, and they died defending you.  So don't stand there and pretend that don't know how it feels, mighty lord or not.  To lose someone you love, or to be helpless when they're hurting."  He was struggling to speak past the tightness in his throat.   "Do you think we suffer less because we die so soon?"

Thranduil looked down at Bilbo. "No," he said at last. "I am not, after all, so utterly heartless.  And you make no other claim on me?"

"I don't understand."  Did Thranduil mean the Arkenstone?  Some repayment for thieving from his king?  

"No?  I suppose it hardly matters now."  Thranduil hesitated for a moment, eyes flickering to the place where Thorin lay. 

Bilbo held his breath. 

"Well, what are you standing around for?" Thranduil said.  Suddenly the king was a flurry of movement, taking up the whole tent at once.   "I need supplies. If your allies have nothing worthwhile on hand, send your runner to find my eldest son and bring him here.  He knows what is necessary.  And fetch me the dwarves who attended him. I might as well hear what they have to say."

Bilbo could hardly believe it. "You'll send one of your healers, then?"

"No, halfling. I will see to him myself. And you needn't gawp.  I have not lived seven thousand years to be useless in a sickroom."

Joy followed close behind astonishment.  Bilbo didn't even notice Thranduil's tart humor. "Thank you," he said, and blast it, he was about to start crying again. "I just—thank you. Thank you."

"I've done nothing yet," Thranduil said. "Now go and make yourself useful."

Bilbo did as he was told.

When dawn finally broke over the encampment, it set the whole world glowing. Snow blanketed everything in sight, and the mountaintop sparkled whenever a bit of sun peeped through the blustery clouds. Bilbo didn't notice any of it. He was as heedless of the weather as he was of his own pain and exhaustion, caught up in the entirely Tookish hope that all might not be lost: that Thorin, against all reasonable odds, might live.

He ran to fetch Thranduil's son, heart pounding double time in his chest.


	3. This Soldier Knows

"The hunting parties are back," Bilbo said, breathless. "Bard says that they've brought the herbs you asked for."

Thranduil didn't even glance up from his work. "Well, don't just stand there idling. Go and fetch them!"

Three days after the battle, life in the camp had settled into a routine.  Thranduil proved as relentless a nurse as he had been a jailor, and he stayed in Thorin's pavilion day and night, with Bilbo as his errand boy. Thorin, for his part, stubbornly refused to die, despite shattered ribs and raw wounds gouged deep in his chest; the greatest danger was that his injuries would fester, and so Thranduil ordered the hunting parties that rode out from the encampment every day to find certain herbs that he claimed would protect against infection.  Bilbo ran and fetched them, as ordered. No sooner had he returned than Thranduil sent him off again, this time with a message for Bard about the patrol rosters. By the time that was settled, he was late bringing Thranduil's supper to the pavilion, and soon it was evening: time for the general meeting. 

Bilbo didn't mind.  On patrols, or as a member of the hunting parties tracking down the last of the goblins and Wargs, he was useless.  But he could run errands and take messages, and the work kept him too busy to fret.  Keeping peace between the three armies was no small task—Thranduil and Dain still refused to speak to one another—but Bilbo had been caught squarely between the Bagginses and the Tooks for his entire life.  He knew something about sorting out squabbling children.

"I'll never understand," Bilbo said to Gandalf on more than one occasion, "why so many important folk insist on being so confoundedly stubborn! I ran fifteen separate messages to Dain this afternoon, and I might as well have told him _Thranduil thinks you're a old grumping fool_ every time."

"You're a hobbit," said Gandalf, as if that was explanation enough. "And even you, Mr. Baggins, couldn't possibly expect thousands of years of ill-will to vanish in a single day."

"It's been the better part of a week, actually," Bilbo said, feeling contrary and mulish.

Gandalf scowled.  "Mind your manners, and don't make a fuss about matters beyond you."  Soon after, though, he turned back to Bilbo and said: "Besides, think of the healers, and the cooks, and the soldiers assigned to patrols. Things are hardly as bad as you're making out."

He was quite right.  The rumors that the Elvenking was tending Thorin Oakenshield had set an unusual precedent.  Soon, elven and dwarven healers were borrowing bandages and medicines from each other, debating the best treatments for infected Warg bites, and sharing hot drinks during hurried meals.  Dain's personal physician could be seen tending to Thranduil's soldiers and Bard's men alike, and Elvish herbs and medicines, gathered in the Greenwood, were being distributed not only to Thorin but throughout the encampment. It was the same with the cooks: provisions were scarce.  It only made sense to share whatever food could be hunted or foraged.

Bilbo heartily approved, though he had no notion how extraordinary it all was.  No one had ever told him of Doriath; the story of Thingol and the Nauglamír was strange to him. As far as Bilbo understood it, the enmity between the elves and dwarves was much like the feud between the Sackvilles and the Whitfoots, which dated back to the memorable night when Will Whitfoot, as a young tween, made off with the entirety of Cameillia Sackville's pantry. 

He knew better than to say anything of the sort to the rest of the dwarves. His friends liked him too well to take offense, and Dain was uncommonly kind to him, in his own gruff fashion. But the dwarves of the Iron Hills had decided that Thranduil was more likely to poison Thorin than to save him, and that Bilbo was nothing more than thief and a meddler.  Bilbo had overheard more than one argument between Dain and his commanders on the subject. Dain's final words were always the same, and they baffled and pleased Bilbo in equal measure.

"My cousin chose the hobbit twice over. I could no more doubt Bilbo Baggins than I could doubt Thorin himself."

And so Bilbo kept running errands, and the days passed by. It seemed unfair that the world could simply get up and carry on after so much death and misery, but nobody asked Bilbo's opinion on the matter. He managed as best he could, and made only two allowances for his grief: at night he slept as near to Thorin as Thranduil would permit, and every morning he stopped by the quiet, miserable tent where Fíli kept watch over his brother's ruined body.

It was, Bilbo thought, the saddest part of the whole sad tale.  When they carried Kíli off the battlefield, one of the dwarven healers told Fíli that giving him a quick end would be a mercy. Pale and half-dead himself, Fíli swore that he would gut anyone who tried. He hadn't left Kíli's side since. Every morning just before dawn, Bilbo brought them breakfast and sat with them for a while.

"Maybe he'll wake up today," Fíli said each morning. "Don't you think he's looking better?"

Bilbo couldn't bring himself to answer.  There was nothing he could say that wasn't a lie or a piece of cruelty.  Each morning he brought Fíli enough food for two, and never commented when he took it away, untouched, each night.

The night before the hunting party brought Thranduil's herbs back to camp, Bilbo had stayed with the brothers for longer than usual, watching while Fíli sat at his brother's side and scribbled on parchment, a string of half-finished designs that he explained to Bilbo in detail. "It'll be a series of catches and levers," he said, "detachable, or at least with different attachments, so he can still hold a shield or use a bellows, or hammer and anvil. I can start taking measurements as soon as—" he glanced down at the space where Kíli's right arm should have been "—well, you know."

"You're very good at that. The sketching."

"When he first apprenticed us, Thorin tried to teach us separately. Thought it would be good for us. But I was no good in the forge and Kíli didn't have the patience for anything else. Eventually he gave up and let us work together." Fíli paused, smoothing over the parchment with calloused hands. "Do you think I'm going mad?"

"No," said Bilbo firmly.  "Of course you're not.  Though I've wondered about myself, these last few days."

"He's going to wake up," Fíli said. "He is. Just like Thorin. They're going to be fine, and Mother will come from the Blue Mountains." He returned to work, rubbing out one of his earlier drawings and beginning again.

His stubborn faith was too much to bear. Bilbo made his excuses and fled.

That night, he sat at Thorin's bedside and talked to him for hours about nothing in particular: telling him how brave and loyal his nephews were, reciting comfortable old stories about his childhood in the Shire, asking all the idle questions that came into his mind. He hoped that one day Thorin would be able to answer them.

* * *

"...and we'll be on short commons within a week, never mind the goblins," Bard said, near the end of the meeting.

With supplies running short and the goblins defeated in detail, it was time for the elves and men to take their leave of Erebor, but there were a hundred different details to be sorted out before than could happen, and Bilbo had flatly refused to carry any more messages between Dain and Thranduil; they would talk face to face, or not at all.  In the end, it was the two Mirkwood princes who attended the meeting, not Thranduil himself. The elder of the two hardly spoke, but the younger charmed everyone in the room, except perhaps for Dain. He left arm was in a sling and he walked with a limp, but he was cheerful in spite of his injuries.

"King Thranduil will stay as long as need be," the prince said now. "As will I, and a few of our guards and personal servants.  My brother will take the rest of our army home to Mirkwood."

"Personal servants," Dain said, eyebrows raised. "How very fine."

Legolas ignored him. "Mithrandir assures us that Dol Goldur no longer poses a threat, and we plan to double the patrols along our borders.  You may rely on a peaceful winter in Laketown, at least."

"In a year, Laketown will be nothing more than an outpost," said Bard.  "One day you will visit Dale, Prince Legolas, and you will find it even greater than it was in Girion's day."

Dain leaned forward.  "Rebuild Dale?  You've said nothing of this to us."

Bard looked startled.  Then he straightened his shoulders, his face blank.  Bilbo repressed a groan.  Over the past few days he'd learned to recognize that particular expression as the herald of endless headaches and frustrations.   "Why should I?" Bard said.  "I do not answer to you, Master Dwarf.  We have as much right to Dale as you to the Mountain."

"As long as Thorin lives, he rules.  You must take up the matter with him."

"Not an easy task, under the circumstances. Laketown is in ashes. My people need a home. How long do you expect me to wait for permission from a dying king?"

"Thorin's not dying!" Bilbo said, indignant.  All eyes turned towards him, and he flushed under the sudden scrutiny. He hadn't spoken since the meeting began. 

"Of course," Bard said. "And you speak for Thorin Oakenshield, then, in the meantime?"

Bilbo cursed himself for a fool.  "I didn't mean—that is to say, I'm not—"

"He does," Dain said.

"Very well." To his credit, Bard sounded only slightly incredulous. "Then we will meet later, Mister Baggins, to discuss the matter of Dale."

What was Dain thinking? Surely if anyone was going to speak on Thorin's behalf it should be Dain himself, or Dwalin, or Balin, or Fíli: anyone other than Bilbo Baggins of the Shire. He wasn't even a dwarf, for goodness sake!  "Er, yes," he managed. "Well. That sounds fine."

It must have been the right response. Dain gave him an approving nod, and the talk turned to other matters.  For Bilbo, though, the rest of the meeting passed in an anxious blur. It was full dark by the time Legolas and Bard finally wandered off, still deep in conversation, and Dain vanished before Bilbo worked up the nerve to demand an explanation.

Thranduil wouldn't need him back right away, so Bilbo let his feet carry him along, his mind restless, an uncomfortable knot in his stomach. The days since the battle had been miserable, but at least his work kept him busy. It was good to feel useful. But making decisions in Thorin's name, and risking someone's wrath no matter what he decided? He would rather face down a Warg. Possibly a whole pack of Wargs.

The torches were already lit, and cooking fires flickered here and there across the encampment. Bilbo found a seat on the cold, rocky ground near one of the smaller fires, letting the heat sink into his skin. He was always cold, these days. A group of dwarves soon settled in around him, noisy and more than a little drunk. They looked at Bilbo was undisguised dislike, and Bilbo quietly slipped away only a few minutes later.

It was odd. Thorin could forgive Bilbo's theft of the Arkenstone, and Bilbo could forgive Thorin's sudden, desperate fit of cruelty.  But dwarves who had never known either of them, who hadn't the slightest claim to Erebor or its treasure, had decided that Bilbo was a troublemaker at best and a traitor at worst. If Dain hadn't defended him, their dislike might have turned into something uglier. As it was, Bilbo bore the dark looks and mutterings with indifference. There were only thirteen dwarves whose opinions he gave a farthing for, and the Company had made it clear that they bore no grudge. 

With that comforting thought in mind, Bilbo headed for one of the places where he felt assured of a warm welcome. If anyone could give him advice about speaking for Thorin, after all, surely it would be Thorin's heir. 

When Bilbo stuck his head into the tent, Fíli was curled up beside his brother, one hand wound through Kíli's unbraided hair, talking quietly in Khuzdul.  "He's breathing easier," he said, when he finally acknowledged Bilbo's presence. "Maybe he'll wake up tomorrow."

Bilbo's heart ached. "Do you mind if I sit with you for a while?"

"We'd be glad of the company." Fíli looked at him more closely, his gaze sharp. "Hard day?"

Bilbo didn't bother to say that all the days were hard. Fíli knew that better than anyone. "I could use some advice, actually," he said. "If it wouldn't be a bother."

"I've plenty of idle time on my hands, these days," Fíli said.

"It's just—Dain said something, at the meeting tonight. About Thorin."  Bilbo scrounged for the right words. "He said that I spoke for him. I know that sounds ridiculous. But it was strange, the way he said it, and now Bard wants to meet with me to talk about Dale.  I haven't the foggiest idea what to do, or why Dain thinks I should manage it."

Fíli whistled, long and low. "Uncle never does anything by halves, does he?  Oh, don't look so grim. It's nothing terrible." 

Bilbo didn't feel particularly reassured.

"When Dain says that you speak for Thorin, he means that you're the king's representative," Fíli said.  "But it's not just about making decisions. It's about—well, it's about trust, more than anything. Trust and affection. Glóin's wife manages his affairs in the Blue Mountains, so we say that she speaks for him. And when Thrain vanished, it was Thorin's duty to speak for him, since he was Thrain's heir.  Does that make any sense?"

"No! I mean, of course it does, but I don't want to be in charge of anything. I wouldn't even know where to start. Can't I give the job to someone else?  You're Thorin's heir, aren't you?"

"It would be a dreadful insult.  We only give the right to a spouse or near relative.  A brother or sister, a child.  A refusal would mean that you didn't value him enough to see his body buried, or his affairs put in order."

"But I don't mean that at all," Bilbo protested.  It was a horrible thought.

"Then don't refuse." Fíli looked down at his brother, a strange expression on his face. "I speak for my brother. That's why everyone has to do as I say and leave him alone, even though they think he's as good as dead no matter."

Oh.  "And that why Dain stood up for me," Bilbo said, realizing.  "Because even if the dwarves don't trust Thranduil to take care of Thorin, it's my decision to make.  Why didn't Thorin just let Dain speak for him?" he said, trying vainly to straighten out his thoughts. "Or you?"

"Dain probably told him that Kíli was dead."

"And he knew that you would be grieving.  That makes sense."

Fíli smiled.  It didn't reach his eyes. "And he knew that soon I would be dead, too," he corrected.  As for Dain: they may have been cousins, but Thorin never liked him very much."

"But Dain was willing to go to war for him," Bilbo said, setting aside the first part of Fili's response as something too painful to touch.

Fíli shrugged.  "They lived in Erebor together as boys.  Thorin thought Dain was weak. Passionless. He hated that.  When Kíli and I were children, he told us that no one could rule without passion. The dragon destroyed Erebor with fire, he would say, and we cannot reclaim our home without it."

If Bilbo had been given a hundred years to describe Dain Ironfoot, the words _weak_ and _passionless_ would never have occurred to him.  But perhaps things had been different when he and Thorin were children; perhaps Dain, like Thorin, had found his fire after Erebor burned.   "When he asked Dain for help at the beginning of the journey, Dain turned him down," Bilbo said aloud, an old memory resurfacing. "Thorin said as much, that night at Bag End."  Bilbo thought of Bag End so little of late.  It felt like another life.   "What a little idiot I was back then," he added, more to himself than to Fíli.   "Fussing over cutlery and pocket handkerchiefs."

"Not an idiot," Fíli said. "None of us ever thought that.  Well," he amended, at Bilbo's incredulous look, "Kíli and I didn't think that."

"What about Thorin?"

Fíli shrugged. "Like Dain. He thought you had no fire. He said once that you'd been born and raised in—oh, there's no good translation.  A toybox?  Someplace safe, comfortable.  False. The Shire unsettled him.  You hobbits all looked like children to us, and you were a tiny little thing with blue eyes and no heart worth bothering about.  That's what Thorin said, at any rate.  But you proved him wrong soon enough. A child couldn't have stood his ground against Azog the Defiler, and a coward wouldn't have tried."

"You make it sound like something out of a story," Bilbo said.  Suddenly the tent felt impossibly small and confined.  He wanted to get out.  "What was I supposed to do—stand back and let him die?"

"You could have, but you didn't.  You burn brightest for his sake."

Bilbo took his leave soon after, shaken and confused.  It was late.  Thranduil would wake him up even earlier than usual tomorrow,  but Bilbo couldn't bear to return to the pavilion.  Instead he slipped the Ring on and walked out past the edges of the encampment, far away from the tents and torchlight and watchmen.  When he found a comfortable rock to sit down on, he lingered for almost an hour, looking up at the moon and drawing idle lines in the snow that blanketed the ground. 

It was a still, cold night.  When Bilbo began to shiver, he wrapped his arms around himself, wishing that Thorin was there sit beside him; perhaps even to hold him.  He carried Fíli's parting words close to his chest, like a piece of jealously guarded treasure.  _You burn brightest for his sake._

Perhaps speaking for Thorin wasn't such a terrible burden, after all. He could always pester Gandalf for advice, and the rest of the Company as well. 

"At least I can try," he said aloud. "I can't promise that I won't muck it all up, mind you. I'm only a hobbit, and no Bullroarer Took, when it comes down to it.  But I suppose you knew that from the beginning."

Presently he got to his feet, dusted the snow off his clothes and headed back towards camp. He would stay at Thorin's side for the rest of the night, and in the morning?  Well, he would deal with the morning when it came.


	4. Aranrúth, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of the details of Tauriel's character are complete invention on my part, since I wrote this before Desolation came out. Her characterization isn't exactly movie-compliant. Neither is Legolas', for that matter. Or the Master's. Or Bard's. I'm sorry! It's what I get for trying to preempt canon. 
> 
> 'Aranrúth' means 'king's ire.' It was the name of Elu Thingol's sword. On a related note, the story that Legolas tells Bard in this chapter is super biased, obviously; the dwarves have their own version of events.

Bilbo wasn't the only one to spend the night stargazing; Bard and Prince Legolas had wandered out on the opposite side of the camp, talking and laughing. They drew stares, some hostile and some merely curious, but neither of them paid their onlookers any mind. Conversation came easy.  They traded stories about the battle, and archery—the merits of different kinds of fletching—and trade along the River Running. Legolas' limp worsened steadily, and his easy grace faded into a rough, dogged endurance, but Bard was tactful enough not to mention it. Eventually they settled on a rocky outcropping a few hundred feet away from the nearest guards.

"Better stay within shouting distance," Bard said, taking off his shabby fur coat and spreading it out on the ground. "No point in tempting fate. Here, sit down."

Legolas hummed noncommittally, and winced as he folded his wounded leg beneath him. "Won't you be cold?"

"I'm never cold," Bard said.  "It used to drive my mother half-mad."

"Oh?"

He gave a crooked, one-shouldered shrug. "When I was a little boy, I fell into the lake in the middle of winter.  If the Master hadn't seen where I broke through the ice, I would have drowned. Nothing's felt cold since."

"You're fond of the Master," said Legolas. "Tell me about him."

"I used to be.  He was clever.  Charming, when he wanted something. I thought him a great man when I was younger."

"And now?"

"He's still charming, at least when he's not sodden with drink.  Clever after his own fashion.  But it wasn't easy, living in Laketown. We survived on a dragon's whim, and the fear drove lesser men away. It turned the Master hard. These days he takes what he can get."  Bard glanced at Legolas and then up at the clear night sky, the stars shining bright and cold in the mountain air. In a moment of uncharacteristic whimsy, he said "I think he would take the stars from the sky, if he thought it would profit him."

Legolas followed his gaze. "You know, one of our great kings once owned a star."

"What?" Bard asked.  Perhaps they were both too idle for their own good.  "I'm a bit old for fairytales, don't you think?"

"That one there," Legolas said, pointing. "And it's not a fairy tale. It's true."

Bard grinned again, reminded for a moment of his children. Ever since they were babes, he had told them stories of their ancestor Girion, and of Dale, the bright crown of the northeast, full of trumpets and merry bells and fine metalworks sent to market. Their grandmother had fussed and covered their ears when he told them about the goblins wars and hunts under the boughs of Greenwood the Great, but the children loved to listen. 

Or they had, at least, before the burning of Laketown.  Smaug was a fairytale monster come to life; Bard doubted that anyone would have much appetite for storytelling in the coming months. 

"Go on, then," he said to Legolas.  "Tell me about your king and his star."

"It was many thousands of years ago," Legolas said. If he noticed the forced cheer in Bard's voice, he said nothing. "In Beleriand. In those days my grandfather served Elu Thingol, our high king of old. We were a proud and powerful people, and Thingol came to possess a jewel of great price—one of three, more beautiful than anything in the world."

"Not more beautiful than this," Bard said. He pulled the Arkenstone out of one of his pockets, where he'd kept it ever since the battle.  He didn't trust the guards outside his tent; for that matter, he didn't trust anyone.  "Don't laugh.  There's no safer place for it."

"You are very sensible, bowman,"  Legolas said, with such a straight face that Bard was reminded for a moment of Thranduil's habitual glower. 

Bard held the stone up, admiring the way the light inside it flickered and changed. It shone even brighter in the starlight. "I don't think there was ever anything so fine," he said. "Thorin Oakenshield and his kin would have gone to war for this.  What treasure could compare?"

"More beautiful than anything in the world," Legolas repeated, but he too stared at the Arkenstone, momentary transfixed.  "Dozens of kings and princes died for them, and thousands of our people.  The desolation of Smaug would have been accounted but little by comparison. Thingol was given one of them as a bride-price for his daughter, so he treasured it all the more, and he gave it to dwarven smiths so it could be set into a necklace."

"Oh," Bard said. "Dwarven smiths.  I see where this is going."

Legolas ignored him. Well, that was a prince's right, Bard supposed.  "The dwarves of Nogrod were great craftsmen.  They did as they were told, but once the work was complete they refused to return the jewel to Thingol. They wanted to take it as payment for their labors. Thingol would not give way, so they killed him and stole away with it."

"And the star?"

"The jewel passed from the dwarves to a mortal man. Years later it came to a great city, a stronghold of the elves, but war followed it. At the very last, a princess cast into the sea. She was Thingol's granddaughter. The gods saved her and the jewel alike, and set the jewel up in the heavens."

"It's a good story," said Bard. "I like it.  But why tell it to me?"   No doubt Legolas had lived a dozen human lifetimes, but suddenly Bard wanted very badly for the prince to know that he was not a wide-eyed boy to be entertained; that he was a man, and no child. 

Legolas looked at Bard, considering.  "You lead better than your Master," he said.  "Someday you will be a great lord.  But such things are never easy.  After a lifetime in your bleak little town, waiting for death to come sweeping down from the mountain, suddenly you are a hero of your people.  You hold the wealth of a thousand towns in the palm of your hand."

Bard tightened his grip on the Arkenstone.  Light shone through the gaps between his fingers.  Suddenly, he didn't like how Legolas was speaking: it was the same careful, reassuring voice that Bard used to soothe restless animals and to coax his children into behaving.  "That was the agreement.  One fourteenth of the wealth of the Mountain to rebuild our home and bury our dead, though there are few enough bodies to bury. Most folk drowned in the lake."

"Will you take a hammer to it, then, and pay your workmen with the shards?  Such a treasure does no good to cities and towns.  It would satisfy the vanity of any king, but I think your people would do better with a simple village bowman."

Bard frowned.  "You want me to give the Arkenstone back to Oakenshield," he said, testing the words.  Legolas stayed silent.  That was all the confirmation Bard needed.  "I see.  So you came here and told me a fairy tale, like a child in need of a lesson on virtue.  What will it matter in the end? Thorin Oakenshield is as good as dead, no matter what the halfling says. I saw him on the battlefield.  No one survives a wound like that."

"King Thranduil is a fine healer, and dwarves are a hardy folk. But if Thorin had died on the battlefield, I would have told you to bury the Arkenstone with his body.  It's an ill fate to keep the treasure of another man's heart."

"And what does it matter to you?"  Bard jerked to his feet, cold with anger and something that felt like betrayal.  He had earned his reward. Dale was his, and the Arkenstone too. His children deserved to have some beauty in their lives; something precious to treasure. 

Legolas stayed sitting, unnaturally still.  "I owe Bilbo Baggins a favor," he said.  "And I was a friend to Lord Girion when he ruled Dale.  I wept when he was killed.  I had thought I might repay my debt to the halfling and do you a service, at the same time.  For Girion's sake."

"A favor.  So the hobbit wants to take back what he stole? I thought better of him than that, and of you."

"It is a matter of honor; the halfling knows nothing about it, and King Thranduil has not permitted me to tell him.  But I see that I've offended you.  I take my leave."

He stood and made to walk back to camp. Bard grabbed him by the arm as he turned to go.  "That story," he said.  "About the star. Was it true?"  He didn't know why it mattered so much to him.  Legolas had wept for Girion, and Bard was sick with anger and grief but hewasn't a child.  It mattered.  It _mattered_.  

"Yes," said Legolas, twisting out of his grasp. Something had changed in his manner.  He looked distant and cold, every bit as unreachable as the stars they had admired only moments before.  "But Girion never believed me either. Good night, Master Bowman."

Bard watched him go.  Damn elves and treasure alike.  He had no use for either.

* * *

 

The morning came, as Bilbo had known it would, heralded by predawn light and an empty bucket thrown unceremoniously at his head.

"Water, now," Thranduil said. "Fetch me breakfast while you're at it. And I've already sent that addlebrained dwarf off with my morning correspondence, so be sure to bring me any replies."

Bilbo stumbled to his feet, yawning and dragging a hand through his hair. "Right," he said, too used to the Elvenking's haughtiness to be offended by it. He'd endured months of the same treatment from Thorin, after all. "I'll just—oh, I know that look. What else is there?"

Thranduil affected disdain, but Bilbo could see the small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "A message from Bard. You're to meet him this afternoon, after the patrols return."

Bilbo made a face. He'd been hoping for at least a few days to prepare something.  A speech?  An argument?  A plea?  "I'll be back in a little while," he said. And then, "How is he?"

It was the same question he asked every morning. Thranduil never made any effort to be reassuring. The first time Bilbo had asked, Thranduil's robes had been stiff with dried blood, his hands bruised and trembling from hours of grueling surgery, and he had answered: "I'll allow that he might survive the day, but don't wager anything you're not willing to lose on the prospect."

Today, Thranduil knelt at Thorin's side and peeled back the bandages that were stretched across his chest, eyes narrowed. "More alive than dead," he pronounced. "And showing no signs of further infection. Which you can take to be progress, and a credit to my tender care. Weren't you leaving?"

Thranduil sounded almost hopeful.  A bright, inexpressible emotion lifted Bilbo's heart and tugged him out of the pavilion, despite his lingering exhaustion.

"You're in a fine mood," Fíli said, as Bilbo delivered his breakfast with a flourish. "Your meeting with Bard went well, then?"

Bilbo made a face. "Ask me again this afternoon. Thorin's looking better, though."

"I told you," Fíli said. "Didn't I tell you?" But he looked at his brother with a flicker of anxiety as he spoke; Bilbo didn't need to be a healer to see that Kíli was getting worse, not better.

"Fíli," he began, helplessly. "Fíli—"

"Don't say it." His tone brooked no argument, and he sounded so like Thorin that Bilbo couldn't help but obey.

The healers still said there was nothing to be done; they all agreed that it was a sickness of the mind.  Kíli would wake up on his own or not at all.  Day by day he sank in on himself, his face hollowing, his skin deathly pale, so that he looked more like a corpse than one merely sleeping.   Even Thranduil pitied him, and spoke of Fíli with a gentleness that ran entirely contrary to his nature.  

Dwarves were tough as mithril, as the saying went, and Kíli was of hardier stock than most.  It was no easy thing to kill a child of Durin's line.  Perhaps that was why Azog had acquired a taste for it.

The brief encounter left Bilbo's good mood scuffed and faded, but the better part of his cheer survived. It was a lovely morning, the mountain rising stark and unadorned above the encampment.  Cold air swept down from the slopes and the sun shone bright and cheerful in the east. He had long since grown used to the morning commotion—the press and noise of hundreds of people eating breakfast, talking, riding out on patrol, fetching water, shouting orders—but on this particular morning things were even busier than usual, particularly on the broad, sloping corridor that had been unofficially set aside as Elvish territory. Half of Thranduil's captains and officers were nowhere to be found, and most of the rest were too busy to pay Bilbo any attention.

The captain of the Mirkwood guard, Tauriel, was at the center of the activity, clearing out her tent and giving orders to half a dozen different people at once. She and the princes had taken on the brunt of Thranduil's work after he had agreed to care for Thorin. Of all Thranduil's captains she was one of the few willing to speak face-to-face with dwarves, so she and Bilbo saw a great deal of one another.

"The rest of the cavalry will screen us to the north," she was saying when Bilbo arrived. "Our patrols say that Bolg fled to Ered Mithrin. If we are attacked, it will be from the foothills."

"And those of us remaining behind?" asked one of the soldiers.

"Discuss it with Prince Legolas. You'll report to him directly, in my absence." Tauriel glanced up and saw the hobbit hovering a few feet away. "That's all for the moment," she said. "You're dismissed. Mister Baggins, don't just stand there hovering. I have something for you."

Bilbo waited while she rifled through the mess of parchment and weaponry scattered across her makeshift desk. "Here," she said at last, pushing a handful of papers toward Bilbo. "King Thranduil will want to look through these."

"What's going on?" Bilbo asked, with a sweeping gesture that seemed to encompass all the morning's hustle and bustle. "Has something happened?"

"We're moving out," Tauriel said. "The army is needed back home."

"Nothing serious, I hope." Gandalf never spoke of that nasty business at Dol Goldur, but something about the ruined fortress troubled Bilbo's mind.  He thought about it often. "Nothing to with—well, you know."

"No, the Necromancer is long gone.  Where did Legolas put the rosters? He should have taken care of all of this last night. Mister Baggins, there's a whetstone on the desk.  Do me a favor and sharpen these."

Bilbo awkwardly caught the two sheathed daggers that she tossed in his direction. "I'm not very good at looking after weapons," he said. "Just so you know."

"You won't get better unless you practice."

"I have errands to run," he protested.

"You'll do better to wait here until things settle down," she said. "It's madness out there, and anyone who has messages for the king will know to bring them to me."

Bilbo looked dubiously at the daggers.  The handles were plain and the sheaths battered, but he had lived long enough among dwarves to recognize good steel when he saw it. He shrugged and set to work; if he mucked anything up, he supposed that she could fix it herself. 

The rasp of the blade against the whetstone was a familiar sound. It made him think of evenings on the long road east, sitting around the campfire and listening to Dwalin tell war stories. "So why are you needed in Mirkwood?" he asked, when his curiosity finally got the better of him.

Tauriel was packing a battered old rucksack with all the efficiency of long practice, and didn't bother to look up. "Housekeeping," she said. "Killing things."

Bilbo had seen enough of the Mirkwood guard to know that their hatred of the giant spiders was bitter and bloody. He didn't know what other creatures lurked in the wilderness surrounding Dol Goldur, but the long, suffocating darkness of the Company's march through Mirkwood was never far from his mind. He shuddered.  "Better you than me."

"You managed well enough last time, from what I hear."

"Don't remind me," Bilbo said plaintively.  Battering his way through a spider-infested forest with a company of half-dead dwarves was not an experience he was eager to repeat. "So do you like it, then?"

"Do I like what?"

"Hunting. Killing things." He set the first dagger aside and began working on the second. "Living in Mirkwood, it seems as if you're always at war."

"Not always," she said. "But yes, I like it. Or at least I like doing my duty, and seeing justice done. Why do you ask?"

Bilbo didn't meet her eyes. "I only wondered."

It sounded so simple.  She did her duty, and she obeyed her king. Bilbo knew how fond she had grown of Kili during their time in the dungeons, but if the keys to the dungeons had been in her possession, Bilbo would have never managed to steal them; at the very least it would have taken precious days, even weeks, that they couldn't have spared.  But she had chased after the dwarves, Bilbo remembered.  After they escaped.  Had she done it under Thranduil's orders?  Somehow he thought not, but it was hardly a question that he could put to her. 

Was it his duty to do as Thorin wanted, whatever the cost?  Thorin would never forgive the man who had dared to march on Erebor, but if Bilbo stood in Bard's way, the tentative peace that had settled over the encampment would be irrevocably shattered.   Bard was a dragonslayer, after all, and Girion's descendent, and the rightful lord of Dale. The men and women of Laketown loved him dearly, and they would treat any insult to him as a deadly affront.   If Bilbo gave Bard leave to settle in Dale, though, the dwarves would think it utterly intolerable.  Even before that miserable business with the Arkenstone—

Bilbo's hands tightened convulsively around Tauriel's dagger.  He scarcely noticed the stinging pain.

The Arkenstone.

Bard still had it.

The Arkenstone's whereabouts had been the last thing on Bilbo's mind.  The dwarves doubtlessly assumed that it had been returned to Thorin, and not without reason. That had been the bargain, after all. If word got out that it was still in the hands of men—well, it didn't bear thinking about. On the matter of the Arkenstone the dwarves were as grim and unyielding as the mountain itself.  Confound it all!  Not for the first time, Bilbo wished that he had never seen the Arkenstone glimmering in the dark, and that it had been left for Thorin or one of the other dwarves to find.

"Prince Legolas told me about your meeting with Bard," Tauriel said, startling Bilbo out of his dismal thoughts.  She tossed the rucksack into an out-of-the-way corner, where it landed with a muffled thump.

"Everyone knows about my meeting with Bard."

"So it goes when you get tangled up with royalty.  Why not speak with Mithrandir? You've been traveling with him for months."

Bilbo shook his head. "He's not been himself since he came back from the old fortress. Not entirely. It wouldn't feel right, bothering him with trifles when he's so worn down."

"It is hardly a trifle," Tauriel said.  "Of all the soldiers in this camp, we are the two called traitors, and for what?  For loving our lords too much to stand aside and watch them do wrong?  Perhaps that is disloyalty; perhaps we are faithless.  I wish that we could speak freely to each other about such things.  But I have an army to lead homeward, and in a few hours you will be settling the fate of nations."

"Don't say it like that," he said, alarmed.

She smiled down at him. Small wonder that Kíli liked her so well.  "The fate of cities, then.  Go and speak with Mithrandir."

Some measure of Bilbo's earlier resolve returned to him. She was right; if anyone could sort out such a miserable tangle, it was Gandalf.  He took a deep breath and got to his feet. "I'll take those messages to Thranduil first," he said. "Oh, and here's your other dagger."

She tested the edge and hummed with satisfaction.  "Good luck to you, Mister Baggins. We ride out this afternoon, and I doubt we will meet again, but I wish you and your king every happiness."

Bilbo bowed and left, the sheaf of papers in his hands.  Outside her tent, preparations for the army's departure continued apace, and he was hard-pressed to keep from being trampled; in the hurry and confusion, even keen-eyed elves might miss a single small hobbit.  He made it back to Thorin's pavilion none worse for the wear, but one of Tauriel's messages put Thranduil in a contrary mood, and when Bilbo asked him where Gandalf might be (wizards were notoriously elusive even under ordinary circumstances) he offered only vague and useless advice. Bilbo spent the rest of the afternoon searching the encampment in growing frustration, his meeting with Bard looming steadily nearer. 

When he found Gandalf at last, he crossed his fingers for clear, straightforward advice, but wasn't particularly surprised when Gandalf offered nothing of the sort.  "Couldn't you just tell me what to do?" he said, twitching with irritation.

"Certainly not.  You're no servant to be led about and given orders, as you've made perfectly clear on more than one occasion.  Your contract was fulfilled long ago."  Gandalf blew a series of smoke rings, looking far more satisfied than he had any right to.   "Now you must make your own decisions," he continued in between puffs of smoke. "As you did in that nasty business with the Arkenstone."

"Oh, yes," Bilbo said. "And that turned out so extraordinarily well."

Gandalf glared at him, eyes sharp underneath his bushy eyebrows. "Don't be pert.  If you truly want my advice, answer me this.  Whom do you serve?"

Bilbo frowned.  "Thorin, of course."  Wasn't it obvious?

Gandalf hemmed and hawed in that infuriating way of his. "Of course, of course.  So it was a different Bilbo Baggins who stole poor Thorin's most prized possession and handed it over to his enemies?"

"It wasn't like that," Bilbo said. But soon he realized what Gandalf was driving at, and his shoulders slumped a little. "Oh, you're quite right, as always.  It wasn't just Thorin. I hated all of it."

"All of what?"

"The fighting.  So many decent people offering to throw their lives away over a confounded pile of treasure, just because Thorin was too stubborn to negotia—oh." Bilbo winced.   "Oh, no.  No, no, absolutely not.  I can't go behind his back like that. I can't betray him again."

"Can you not?"

"No.  And that's final," said Bilbo, firmly, when Gandalf looked like he might press.

"Then you don't want my advice after all, do you?   But you would do well to remember, Bilbo Baggins, that your dwarves could still lose Erebor as quickly as they regained it.  Things in the east are going to get worse before they get better, and one day King Thorin will need more than twelves dwarves and a hobbit to defend his own."

If only Thorin were awake, Bilbo thought, not for the first time. If only Bard had been willing to wait a few more days! But the Laketown folk were growing restless, and who could blame them?

A decision had to be made; Bilbo was the one stuck making it.

On the one side there was Thorin's trust, his gruff conversation, the love and longing in his voice when sang of Erebor. There was good company around a campfire, Thorin's strong arms wrapped around his shoulders, a rough kiss pressed against his curls. Bilbo could see it all so clearly: he would be assured of welcome in Erebor, and the friendship of its king, no matter how many long years passed by. He would visit often, even after his return to the Shire, and Bofur would always be waiting in Laketown to greet him and drag him back to Erebor, teasing and telling outrageous stories all the while. One day he would meet Thorin's sister and Glóin's wife and young son.  He would have a family of his own, fierce and strange and entirely wonderful.

On the other side, there was—nothing. Thorin had absolved him for one betrayal, but Bilbo wasn't naïve enough to believe that he would so forgiving a second time. He still remembered the look in Thorin's eyes that day on the walls of Erebor, and he never wanted to see him look that way again.

" _Take him, if you wish him to live, and no friendship of mine goes with him."_

Bilbo might have raged and shouted at the unfairness of it all, but he was a grown hobbit, after all. It didn't matter how tired he was, or how much the long days of fear and worry weighed on him. It didn't matter that he was being forced, one more miserable time, to betray either his king or his principles.  What use did he have for principles, anyway? What had they ever gained him?

What were they compared to Thorin Oakenshield's affection?

"You're right," Bilbo said. "I owe Thorin my life a dozen times over, and I won't betray him again.  I won't let Bard have Dale until Thorin gives it over himself."

The smoke rings stopped. Gandalf looked at him searchingly.  When Bilbo flushed and stared at the ground, unable to meet his eyes, the wizard sighed. 

"As I said, you must make your own decisions." 

His disappointment was obvious, but Bilbo refused to lose Thorin again—not when they were finally home, the battle won and Azog dead at last.

For more than a century, the dwarves of Erebor had been a lost and ruined people, welcome nowhere, their princes and great warriors reduced to shoeing horses and forging nails. Now they were lords and kings once more, and Bilbo wouldn't dishonor them by forcing them to treat with a man they neither liked nor trusted.  Bard had lived in Esgaroth his entire life. Dale was nothing more than a story to him, a ruined city; the home of distant, unfamiliar kin.

Surely the man would be willing to see reason.


	5. Aranrúth, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who's sick of reading about elves: the next chapter will be from Thorin's POV.

The right flank was crumbling.

Goblins had scaled the slopes to the south, and it was on the right of Thranduil's army that they pressed the hardest, while on the rocky ground of Raven Hill they charged again and again.  The bodies of the Elvenking's dead soldiers were piled before the living, and in between assaults the quickest and boldest of the elves slipped out beyond it to scavenge the field for arrows.

In one such lull, Thranduil heard the familiar voice of his youngest son.  He looked back to see Legolas walking towards him, stopping every few steps to speak briefly with one of the soldiers or drag bodies to the barricade to shore up a weak point.  His left arm hung useless at his side, wrapped in a bloodstained, filthy piece of cloth, but he gave no evidence of distress or pain.  For a moment, Thranduil let himself be proud. Legolas was young and fearless, and one day he would make a fine commander. Much of the army had never seen battle, and Legolas was sometimes awkward in his attempts to comfort and reassure, but he looked so very like his grandfather that Thranduil ached to think of it.

"My lord," he said, finally coming to stand by Thranduil's side. "How do you fare?"

Thranduil reached up to brush a tangle of hair out of Legolas' face. The gesture left a streak of blood across his forehead, and Thranduil let his gauntleted hand drop to his side. "You have eyes, child. Look around you."

Legolas obeyed, mouth tightening as he took in the ragged line of elves, the few remaining guards that stood in a loose circle around their king, the goblins down in the valley massing for another charge. One of Azog's commanders was clearly visible among the mob, mounted on a giant warg and bulling his soldiers into some semblance of order.

"Namirion wants to fall back along the ridge, close to the mountain," Legolas said, a question in his voice. "I told him that it was no good, but if you want—"

"No," Thranduil said, sharply. "Your brother should not be so quick to give ground. Thorin and Dain are fighting in the valley, and some of our own fight alongside them. If Bard loses the eastern spur, or if we fall here, the dwarves will be overrun and all of us surrounded. We stand on Raven Hill or not at all."

Legolas nodded.  "Here they come," he said, nodding down towards the goblin army. 

A cacophony of howls and clashing metal heralded the charge, and Thranduil snapped out a few last minute orders before taking up his sword once again. Beside him, Legolas notched an arrow to his bow.

"My last," he said, ruefully. "I shall have to make do with my long-knives after this."

"You and your knives. Tauriel has been a bad influence, and I despair of you both."

"Oh, never despair,"said Legolas, with all the misplaced confidence of youth, as the first volley of arrows whistled above them. "We will not die today, father."

Then battle was upon them once more. Thranduil's world narrowed to the blood pounding in his heart, the crush of bodies surrounding him, the familiar weight of his sword and the feel of it as he cut through flesh and bone. Legolas was beside him, quicker if not so deadly, and more than once a goblin cut past Thranduil's guards only to see a flash of blond hair and die with a knife buried in his gut.

The goblins pressed forward, trampling the bodies of the dead into the rocks and dust. Thranduil fought on. They were hard-pressed, but if only the line could hold—and it would hold, it would, his captains were brave and they would not falter in battle, they would fight for every inch of barren ground—

Far to his right, a horn sounded the retreat.

He whirled around, shock like a sharp blow to the chest.  That was his undoing. A moment of distraction, and a warg-rider leapt at his unprotected back, tearing at his guardsmen and knocking him to the ground. The warg loomed over him, teeth bared.  Thranduil met its stare with a snarl of his own, a wild thing cornered. He would not die like this, helpless and weak, his kin led to the slaughter in the foothills of bedeviled Erebor. He would not leave his children without their father and his people without their king.

The warg's stinking breath was hot against its face. It bent towards his unprotected throat. Thranduil cursed and struggled.  And then there was nothing but pain, sudden and shattering. Distantly, he heard a howl of agony, a body slamming against the rock beside him, the choked whines of a dying beast. The world went black around him.

The next thing Thranduil knew, someone was pushing the warg's body off of him.  His guardsmen were by his side, dragging him up and away from the battle. He tried to protest, but there was no air in his lungs. All around him the elves were falling back, even as the goblins made their final howling charge up the slopes.  Through the haze of confusion and pain, he heard their commander roar "take him!" 

He thought that the goblins meant to take him prisoner, but the truth was far worse. 

Kneeling in the midst of the fallen, beside the warg he had killed, was Legolas. The goblins were advancing on him.

Thranduil reeled. "Legolas," he gasped, but the name vanished in the screams and clamor. "My son—"  No one heard. No one recognized the prince among the bodies that littered the field. Thranduil watched, helpless, as Legolas tried to stand, scrabbling in the dirt for any weapon at hand.  

A last volley of arrows, but it was too late. The goblins crested the hill. They tore into the last of the retreating soldiers, hewing the wounded where they lay.  Not Legolas. The goblin commander dismounted beside the prince, crouched over him, grabbed his hair near the scalp and yanked him close.

Thranduil knew what goblins did to their prisoners. _Not my son_ , he thought, numb to the carnage around him. _Not my little prince._

At last, one of Thranduil's guards saw what was happening.  He cast aside his sword and put a horn to his lips. The note split their air of the summit, a rallying cry that stilled that battle for one small moment. "To your king!" he cried. "Rally to the hill!"

A goblin cut the guard's throat while the horn blast still echoed on the foothills.  But the soldiers obeyed. The goblin advance ground to a halt, broken on the swords and spears of the ragged line, and Thranduil threw himself into the fray even as the last of his guards died in his defense. He knew, in some cold distant part of his mind, that they would retake the hill. The weight of the battle had shifted in their favor.

But not in time. The goblins would kill his son, or capture him, and there was nothing Thranduil could do to stop it.

Then Thorin's halfling appeared out of thin air behind the enemy commander, and stabbed him in the back.

Thranduil faltered. He could scarcely believe his own eyes, so unexpected was the sudden attack, and the goblins shared his shock. Their commander looked down in blank surprise at the glowing blue blade protruding from his chest, hands scrabbling at his ribcage as he fell, dragging the halfling down behind him. The halfling tried ineffectually to tug his dagger free, gave up, and grabbed a sword lying abandoned on the field. It was too heavy for him, but Legolas took it gladly.  He lurched to his feet, though one of his legs almost gave out beneath him. 

The goblins fell back, uneasy. Their confusion only lasted a moment.  But even as Thranduil cut a path towards his son, another strange thing happened—the halfling looked up and stared off into the distance.  "The eagles!" he cried, voice thin and almost inaudible even to Thranduil's sharp ears. "The eagles are coming!" 

The goblins reached him before Thranduil did, and the halfling was knocked aside by a ferocious blow. He vanished before he hit the ground, but Thranduil had no time to think about that. His soldiers were already pushing the goblins back.  Thranduil caught Legolas as the younger elf staggered and fell, blood dripping from his arm and wounded leg.

"I have you," he said. "You're safe now."

It was patently untrue. Battle was still raging around them, even as the eagles swept down from the heights and others took up the halfling's cry. Legolas choked out a laugh and reached out with one bloody hand.

"Father," he said. "The halfling."

Thranduil gathered Legolas up in his arms. The goblins scattered, the eagles clawing and beating at their backs.

Thranduil could hear the dwarven armies howling across the plains, a sound of terrible grief. So Thorin had fallen, then, or perhaps his heirs.  Then there came another cry, deeper, and of a different kind. A single voice instead of many, the roar of some great beast full of mindless rage.  Beorn. 

Thranduil handed Legolas to the nearest of his soldiers. "See to it that my son is kept safe," he said. "And order the heralds to sound a charge."

Down into the valley the surviving elves rushed, horns and war cries ringing wild in the air, and Thranduil at their head, pitiless with rage.

* * *

 

Seven days later, the battle won and most of the wounded cared for, the greater part of the elven army marched away. They left in the late afternoon, as the shadows began to lengthen, and neither Thranduil nor Legolas rode with them. They had a debt to repay. It fell to the crown prince to command the army, at least in name, and Tauriel to run it.

It was Tauriel who had spent the last twelve hours caught up in a frenzy of planning, confusion, and harried orders; as she once told Bilbo, anyone who believed that armies moved on a whim had never known war. She realized only belatedly that she hadn't seen Namirion all day, and she kept up a stream of silent curses while she crisscrossed the encampment in search of him.

Her irritation was mingled with pity.  Namirion and Thranduil hadn't spoken since the first night after the battle, when they had worked desperately to keep the dwarven king alive. It would be a long time before Thranduil forgave him for sounding the retreat on Raven Hill.  It would be a long time, for that matter, before Namirion forgave himself.  Tauriel had seen the look on his face as he watched the soldiers carrying Legolas off the field, motionless, his armor rent. 

"He is dead," Namirion had said, blank with horror.  "I left my brother to die." 

"You left him to be captured," Thranduil said.  His face was twisted into something ugly.  "You sounded the retreat.  You fled the field, unwounded.  You left the kingsguard alone and unaided, and but for the dwarves' hired thief, your brother would have been taken prisoner. To Gundabad, perhaps, or Ered Mithrin; it would scarcely matter.  After a fortnight in orcish hands you would not know him." 

"Father," Namirion said.  He reached out to him, supplicating. "I did not—"

Thranduil had never in life hit his children, but for a moment Tauriel thought that he would strike Namirion across the face.  Instead Thranduil stepped back from his outstretched hand and turned away.  "You are dismissed," he said coldly.  "Tauriel will see to what remains of the army.  She may be a traitor but she is no coward.  She, at least, has never failed me in battle."

Since then, Namirion was rarely seen outside the healers' tents, where he worked night and day tending to the wounded. Tauriel found him at last at the far edge of the valley, looking up at the southern spur of the mountain. "Time to go, your highness," she said. "I've said our farewells to King Thranduil and your brother."

He jumped back a little at the sound of her voice. "I'll be there presently," he said.

"We need to leave now." Tauriel often argued with Thranduil and Legolas, but she wasn't accustomed to giving orders to the royal family.  "Come along.  We will be home soon."

"I'm not a child, and you needn't patronize me," he said. "It is only—I cannot stop thinking about it."

She followed his gaze.  "I know.  That's the way of it, after a battle.  Do you supposed your father and grandfather never thought of the dead?  That they never lay awake at night or wept when a battle went ill?"

"My grandfather was killed at Dagorlad because he would not abandon his men. Because he _fought_.  I ran.  I left my brother to torment and death on the battlefield. My own father has no further use for me."  Namirion finally looked at her, tearing his eyes away from the distant silhouette of Raven Hill, shadowed in the fading winter light.  "I will keep this place with me until I die."

She understood, even if she not a proud Sindarin prince.  "Come along," she said again.  "We will leave now, and march through the night."  She pressed a hand to his bowed shoulders, then turned and walked away.

He trailed behind her all the way back to the gathered army, and rode beside her at the head of the column when they marched out at last.

Despite it all, Tauriel was glad to be back among her own people again, with duties to fulfill and uncomplicated orders to obey. She was still gladder to be on the road to Eryn Galen. She belonged in the woodlands where she had lived and fought since she was just a girl, in the caves and among the green boughs; she wanted to see the world, not to live in it.  Erebor, and the flat desolate land that surrounded it, felt bleak and foreign to her. 

But a part of her heart was bound up in the mountain, or at least in the rough, reckless warriors who had set out to reclaim it.  She glanced back one last time as they passed out of sight of the mountain. As they reached the outskirts of the Long Marshes, she said a silent prayer for Kili, heartfelt, the words worn smooth with constant use.  _I am no child of yours, Aulë, but think kindly of one who is—a boy of Durin's blood, best beloved of his king and kin._

"What are you thinking about?" Namirion asked.  His horse nickered at the sound of her master's voice; he had been unnaturally silent since they left Erebor. 

"Prince Kili," Tauriel said, surprised into honesty. "One of Thorin's heirs."

"The dark-haired one? They said he died over the dwarf king's body."

"No. He still lives."

Namirion's eyes narrowed. "You truly are fond of him.  I thought you left because you finally lost your temper with father."

"I did," she said, but offered nothing more.  Under ordinary circumstances, Namirion would have harried her endlessly about it.  Legolas' fondness for mortals like Girion had always worried him, but Legolas has lost that life in the ruin of Dale; most of his mortal friends died when the city was razed, and the rest wanted nothing to do with the kingdom that had abandoned them.  Now Tauriel had fallen prey to the same affliction, and she was entirely prepared to be the newest object of Namirion's baffled fear.

But he only sighed and looked down, fingers tangled in his horse's mane. "I am sorry for you," he said.  "It must be lonely."  And then, several minutes later: "Are you in love with him?"

"Not in the way you mean," she said. "But Kili makes me smile. I like talking to him. I like the way he looks when he laughs."

"And how he fights for those he loves." 

Tauriel knew that he was thinking about Legolas again. But it was true, of course.  "Yes.  I like that, too. But your highness, you should not let—" the words trailed off.  "What was that?"  She raised her arm, signaling the column to a halt. "Quiet," she ordered, and the soldiers around her fell silent.  "Do you hear that?"

Namirion listened, and then paled.  Horns were sounding in the distance, first to the north and then the east.  "No," he said. "No. It's not possible."

Tauriel bit back a curse.  It had been too much to hope that they would make it home unscathed. "Your highness, if I may?"

He nodded wordlessly. Tauriel whirled her horse around, gesturing sharply to her second-in-command. "Merenlír, guard the prince. You're in command until I return."

She urged her horse into a canter and rode down the long curve of the road, then turned north and out into the Desolation. The horns were silent, but as she approached the distant line of cavalry she heard the whinnying of horses, and screams cut short.  A handful of scouts were riding towards the main body of the army; she waved them toward her. 

"They're shooting from the marshes," one of the scouts said. "Hiding behind the tussocks and trees, picking us off one by one. But I think there's a larger force moving behind them. If they get to the road—"

"—they'll cut us off. Damn it to the Void, I thought we were finished with this." Tauriel bit her lip, thinking fast.  "Very well. You get back to Erebor. Take your best riders and raise the alarm. We'll do what we can here."

The scout nodded. "We'll rouse them from that mountain," she said.  "Never fear."

The scouts turned east, along the road and deep into the gathering gloom; Tauriel returned to Namirion, quick as could be. She rode up to him in a cloud of dust. "Your highness, we're about to be attacked," she said. "It may be only a small force, but we must assume the worst."

"Very well," Namirion said. His hands were trembling.  Whatever Thranduil might say, Namirion was no coward, Tauriel knew.  But Raven Hill had ruined him for command. 

Merenlír intervened. "Your orders, captain?"

"Get the wounded to the center of the formation and keep moving," she said. This at least, was familiar; this was a lifetime in the guard.   "We've got the river to one side and the marshes to another, so we'll spread out along the road. The goblins will try to make us cluster together, but we mustn't let them. If they surround us, or pin us down, we're dead."

"The scouts?" Merenlír asked.

"Bring them in close. Those marshes are no place for cavalry and we don't have the men for pitched battle. It's a job for the archers until we reach our own borders, or reinforcements for Erebor arrive."

"Will they come?" Namirion asked.  His horse, sensing its rider's discontent, fretted and tossed its head.

Tauriel smiled tightly, and said nothing.

* * *

 

Bard stared. "You're not serious."

"I am." The hobbit was deathly pale, but he didn't stammer or shake. "I'm sorry. It's my decision."

Bard took a deep breath.  It required a monumental act of will to keep from lashing out and knocking Bilbo across the tent. The impulse startled him; he had never thought himself a violent man, not outside of battle.  "Who are you to deny my people a home?" he said at last.  His voice, he thought, was admirably even. 

"I'm not doing anything of the sort.  You have Laketown. And no one's saying that Dale shouldn't be rebuilt. I'm just saying that _you_ can't be the one to rebuild it. Shouldn't that be the Master's job, anyway?"

"The Master isn't the one who killed the dragon.  He's not heir to a lord. Dale isn't his to claim."

"Well, the Arkenstone isn't yours either, when it comes to it," said Bilbo, straightening to his full height of just over four feet. "You agreed to trade the Arkenstone for a fourteenth share of of the wealth.  Dale was never part of the negotiations."

"I'm not the one who used my king's birthright as a cheap bribe," Bard said, losing his temper at last.

"And I'm sick to death of everyone holding that over my head," Bilbo's cheeks were red, his voice growing louder with every word.  "I should have saved myself the bother and let the lot of you get yourselves killed. You and Thorin and Thranduil were all being perfect idiots."

Bard's palms itched. His dreams turned to ash, just like Laketown, and all because of a foolish little creature who had no right to be meddling in the business of Elves and Men.  "Very well," he said. "Have it your way. But my men and I aren't going anywhere. Whatever hold you have on the dwarves and the elves, it won't long survive Thorin. Maybe the blond boy will be willing to see sense."

"Leave Fili out of this," Bilbo snapped. "He's suffered enough as it is."

"We've all suffered. Tthe men of Esgaroth will sit at the foot of this mountain until you've suffered a good deal more."

One of Bard's soldiers chose then, of all the wretched moments, to stick his head inside the tent. He was a childhood friend; once he and Bard had been wild young guardsmen together, but that was another life.

"Not now," Bard growled.

The poor man looked wretched, but he refused to leave.  "There's been an attack," he said, before Bard could throw him out of the tent.  "Elven messengers are here."

There was a moment of blank silence. 

"Tell me," Bard ordered, at the same time Bilbo said "But I thought the goblins were dead!"

The soldier gave his report.   Goblins had come down from the foothills into the Desolation, and tangled with the elves on the road through the Long Marshes. The crown prince had sent some of his horsemen back to report, but the army was pressing on to Mirkwood.

"And the goblins?" Bard asked. 

"Spread out across the marshes. They won't show themselves, but the prince's messengers say that there's a second force moving in behind. By now the road's been taken, like as not."

Bard muttered something ugly under his breath. "How did they get past our patrols? No, never mind that now. Pass word to Dain. If the goblins have a stronghold in the foothills of the Ered Mithlin, they can attack the road at will, and in force."

In less than half an hour, Bard's tent had been transformed into a council of war. Dain brought another dwarf with him—Dwalin? One of Thorin's companions, at any rate—and Legolas stood with his brother's messengers. The Arkenstone and Dale were forgotten, at least for the moment, but Dain had insisted on Bilbo's presence. Bard didn't bother to protest.

There was an awkward silence as they looked around at one another. It escaped no one's notice that, as allies went, they weren't particularly agreeable.  

"We really must stop meeting like this," Legolas said, startling a few scattered laugh out of the assembly.

It was enough to shatter the tension. "I always reckoned it too hopeful by far, thinking that Bolg would slink back to Gundabad," said Dain.  "If it is Bolg, that is." 

"He escaped the battle after Azog was killed, and the patrols haven't been able to track him," Bilbo said.

"Yes, thank you for telling us what we already know, Mr. Baggins," said Bard, but there was no real heat in his voice. In fact, he felt better than he had in days. Steadier, clear-headed. More like himself.

"Doesn't matter if it's Bolg or not."  That was Dwalin.  "The Desolation's a miserable place for an ambush. Not enough cover, even in the marshes." He nodded in Legolas' direction. "They'll lose as many men to the land as to your brother's archers. And they should've waited until your army was further from Erebor."

"If the goblins are strong enough to attack the road to Mirkwood, then they might go after the Laketown survivors," Bard said, though he hated the thought.  "They've gotten past us once already.  Right now there's army of elves between the goblins and the lake. Who knows for how long, if we don't come to their aid?"

"We can't," said Bard's old friend, and pressed on despite Bard's ferocious glower.   "Most folk say we should've gone back to the lake days ago.  We've got no army.  We can't even look after our own people. What good will it do our families if we get ourselves killed in the marshes?"

Dain and Dwalin were whispering together, apparently arguing over something. "Ask Bilbo," Dwalin growled at last. "I'll do it, if he orders me to."

"Order you to do what?" Bilbo asked, sounding alarmed.

"I have two hundred dwarves armed and ready to march," Dain said. "Dwalin will command them."

"You would help the elves?" Bard said, incredulous.  "You must be joking."

Dwalin shrugged his massive shoulders.  "I don't joke, Master Bowman.  We just got rid of the bastards.  Not about to let them come slinking back on account of a few goblins. Put us on the road behind them, and we'll crush their raiding party between us. You give the word, Mister Baggins."

"Yes," Bilbo said, after a long pause. "If you think it best. I trust you."

"I'll pass word to the lads," Dwalin said, and bowed to Bilbo before striding out of the tent. Bard noted, with some distant amusement, that  Bilbo looked more alarmed by _that_ than anything else that happened so far.

"Wait," Legolas called. "I'm coming with you."

Dwalin turned back, scowling. "I've no use for an injured princeling."

"No, but you'll have use for someone who knows Mirkwood signs and signals. How else will you communicate, if the road is taken?"

Dwalin huffed. "As you like.  Don't expect us to coddle you."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Legolas said, a little haughtily.

Bard watched them go, something tight and uncomfortable settling in his chest.  He tore his gaze away, looking across the tent at Bilbo instead.

The hobbit was pale but determined.   "Excuse me," he said. "If there's any unpleasantness coming, I need to go tell Thranduil."  It was obvious that he really meant _I need to look after Thorin_ , but Bard let him go without a fuss. He had his own men to mind, and Laketown as well.

"Back to work," Bard said, bitterly, when Bilbo was gone and he was alone once more. "And so much for peace."

* * *

 

When Bilbo returned to Thorin's pavilion, he was surprised to find Legolas and Thranduil deep in conversation, their words quick and light and entirely foreign. Bilbo hesitated at the entrance, but Thranduil waved him in impatiently, so he settled down in his usual spot beside Thorin.  The dwarf was lying silent as ever, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling steadily.

"I'm sorry I was away for so long," Bilbo said, voice low.  "It's been such a wretched day.  Now there's been another attack, and I've sent Dwalin off to help the elves. I think I did right, though maybe you wouldn't agree."

Thorin didn't reply, of course. Bilbo was used to that. After years of living alone at Bag End he was accustomed to talking to himself when there was no one else to chat with, and it was easy as breathing to sit beside Thorin and tell him about his day, or complain about Thranduil—usually while Thranduil himself was present, because Thorin would appreciate that sort of rudeness when it came to the Elvenking—or ramble about anything else that came to his mind.

"I'm sick to death of war and fighting, Thorin," he said, taking one of Thorin's calloused hands in his own and pressing a kiss to his palm. "I wish that you were here to fix things."

There was a lull in the conversation behind him, and Bilbo looked over his shoulder to see Thranduil and Legolas embracing. It was more affection than Bilbo had ever seen Thranduil show before, and the gesture surprised him; Bilbo had rather assumed that the Thranduil regarded his sons with the same casual contempt he had for the rest of the world.  But Thranduil's face was drawn, his hands clenching and unclenching around the rough fabric of Legolas' cloak, as if he couldn't bear to let go. Legolas murmured something, and finally Thranduil stepped back and nodded sharply.

"We'll be back by morning," Legolas said, catching Bilbo's gaze. "One way or another."

"Good luck," Bilbo said, trying his best to smile. He liked the Mirkwood prince well enough. Sometimes he was surprised by his own fondness, because there was no good reason for it; they spoke to one another only occasionally, and Legolas was polite but distant. Perhaps it was only that he was an elf. All the elves—especially Thranduil, for all his pettiness—made Bilbo feel absurdly young and childish and overawed.

Legolas took his leave. Thranduil lingered a few moments longer and then stormed out himself.  Bilbo was left alone with Thorin.  He tried to settle, to calm his racing thoughts, but it was no use. He was wound tight with nerves, from the wretched meeting with Bard and the knowledge that his friends were about to march into battle yet again. Bilbo had fought trolls and goblins and spiders on the long road to Erebor, and hated every minute of it, but now he realized that waiting helplessly for news was a hundred times worse.

Well, there was no point in trying to sleep. He stood and paced instead, wearing a furrow in the ground as he waited out the long hours of the night. Occasionally the watchmen called out, and once or twice he heard the clamor of booted feet and shouted orders, but mostly everything was still and silent.

He couldn't keep his thoughts straight.  He lurched from his scattered memories of Raven Hill to wild speculations on how Dwalin and his dwarves were faring. He thought about Mount Gundabad, and Bolg, and Smaug's corpse lying in the bitter water of Long Lake. 

Was it only this morning that the world had seemed so cheerful and full of promise, that he could think of no worse fate than incurring Thorin's wrath?  

Long, long hours passed before a sudden confusion of shouts and cries shook him free of his bleak thoughts, and he hurried outside.  "Look, Master Baggins," said one of the guards. "There, coming up along the river."

Bilbo squinted out in the darkness. His eyes were sharp, but even he had trouble making out details at that distance. Not goblins, surely. Was it Dwalin? Yes, and Dain's men, and some of the elves, too. He hurried down to meet them, wriggling through a throng of gathered men and dwarves and wishing impatiently that the returning army would march just a little bit faster.

As they approached, he scanned the ranks anxiously, looking for his friends. There were Dwalin and Glóin, both unharmed, and indeed only a few of Dain's men had visible injuries. Legolas was there as well, and more elves than Bilbo had expected, some so badly hurt that they had been lashed to their mounts to keep from falling off.

"What did I tell you, Master Baggins?" Dwalin called as soon as they were within speaking distance of one another. "Like taking gold from a dwarfling."

"The battle went well, then?" Dain said, striding up to stand beside him.

"Three hundred goblins, I reckon. But they weren't looking for us to catch them from behind, or for the prince's men to turn and fight. We killed most and drove the rest into the marshes."

Bilbo grinned.  The ragged crowd cheered.  "You lot, make yourself useful," Dwalin ordered when the noise died down. "We've got wounded to care for. Help get them to the healers."

"We'll set the cooks to breakfast," Dain said, prompting a second cheer, even louder than the first.

Dwalin shoved his way through the ensuing chaos towards Bilbo, and clapped the hobbit on the back hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. "What do think of that?" he said. "We'll drive them from Mount Gundabad yet."

"Was it Bolg?" asked Bilbo. "Did you kill him?"

"If it was, he slunk away as soon as the killing started. But he'll show himself sooner or later. When he does, we'll make him curse the foul bitch that whelped him."

Soon, the heady smoke of cooking fires wafted through the air, and the returning soldiers settled down to a hot meal and some semblance of the camp's morning routine. As soon as he smelled food, Bilbo remembered that he hadn't eaten since yesterday morning, and quite suddenly he was ravenous. He scarfed down three bowls of stew and worked his way through most of a fourth before wandering out across encampment in search of a friendly face.

Instead, he found Bard, sitting by some of the other commanders and talking over the battle. Just the sight of the man was enough to make him uncomfortable, but Bilbo took a deep breath, and walked over to sit beside him anyway.

"About Dale," he said, before his courage failed him. It had been haunting him all throughout the long night, but now that he had the chance to speak he couldn't find the proper words.

"Don't fret about it," said Bard. He was hunched in on himself, his shoulders slumped and his brow furrowed. "I'm taking my men back to Laketown on the morrow. I was a fool to think that the East would ever be safe, and I don't have fighters to guard Laketown and stake a claim on Dale."

"No," Bilbo said. "I mean—that's not what I meant."

Bard picked up a stick and poked the fire with it. The flickering shadows gave his weathered face a grim, unhappy look.

Bilbo sighed. He had already put his foot in it, and there was no point in backing out now. "Oh, bother, I'm going about this all wrong. I mean to say, why don't you just bring all your folk up from Laketown and pass the winter here? Dwarves will be coming home to Erebor in droves, and you'll have craftsmen and builders to help with Dale."

At last, Bard turned to look at him. "If this is a joke," he said, slowly, "it is uncommon cruel of you."

"No," Bilbo said, scuffing one bare foot against the cold ground. "It's not a joke."

"Why are you doing this? Your king hates me. You said yourself that Dale was never a part of our negotiations." Bard's voice was hard and suspicious.

"And you said that it was foolish to think the East would ever be safe. Gandalf said much the same. I didn't want to believe it, but now—well.  Look." Bilbo gestured vaguely around the campfire. Dwalin and a half-dozen other dwarves were sprawled out on the ground, talking and laughing. Legolas was sitting apart, fiddling with a bandage wrapped around his forearm, and speaking in low tones with two of the elves who had returned to Erebor with him. Gandalf had appeared some time before, smoking contentedly and occasionally sending meaningful glances Bilbo's way.

There was no reason for them to be gathered here, eating breakfast and trading tales of the battle. And yet they were still caught up in a strange camaraderie, a lingering sense of the shared strength that had once again saved all their lives. The elves and dwarves weren't speaking to one another, but they drank with comparative good grace, passing around tankards filled with foul-smelling alcohol. Apparently, some enterprising dwarf had set up a distillery behind the mess hall.

"We can't keep tossing our soldiers together and pointing them at the goblins," Bilbo said. "We need plans, and treaties, and proper alliances. We need to guard the road and the marshes, and organize joint patrols. I haven't the slightest notion where to start, but you and Dwalin understand war and strategy and, well, that sort of thing."

A soft, accented voice interrupted them. "Here, Master Bowman."

Bilbo and Bard looked up to see one of the elves standing before them, two brimming mugs in hand. "From the prince," she said. "You look like you could both do with a drink."

Bard wordlessly accepted the mug and raised it in silent salute. Legolas, across the campfire, mirrored him. Bilbo simply took a few hearty gulps before he could think better of it, eyes watering as the liquid burned its way down his throat. "Thank you," he gasped. "It's very, er. Strong."

Bard looked down at him, still unsmiling. "Your king will be angry."

"Yes, I expect so. But I'm used to it, and what's the worst that can happen? I'll be banished, and go home to Bag End. I'll survive, I expect."  Bilbo watched the logs on the fire crack and crumble, sparks flying up into the soft glow of predawn light. It would be worth it, he thought. He could endure the long lonely road home to the Shire, spending the rest of his life by the mill and the Bywater, going to market once a week and whiling away the evenings in his armchair by the fire. It would be enough to know that Erebor was safe, and Dale, and Mirkwood. It would be enough to know that these strange, dangerous folk would fight alongside one another, defend one another come what may.

"I see," Bard said. "And that is truly your decision?"

Bilbo nodded. "Bard, Lord of Dale. It suits you."

"Does it?"

"It will," Bilbo said. He was certain of it. Bard would be a great king, and he would rule Dale as Thorin ruled Erebor. Maybe, on some bright distant day, they would even be able to speak civilly to one another.

Bard looked out at some indeterminate point in the distance. "So you say. And you're not the only one. If I'm not careful I'll start putting on airs, and making much of myself." Abruptly, he tossed a small, wrapped bundle at Bilbo's feet. It landed in the dirt with a dull thud. "Here."

Bilbo picked it up cautiously. It was a familiar weight in his hands, and he didn't need to unwrap the tattered cloth to know what it was. Now it was his turn for astonishment.

"Why?" he blurted out. "I mean, thank you. But I don't understand."  It was only fair, he supposed.  One good deed for another.  But he wasn't used to such things anymore. 

"What use do I have for the Arkenstone?" Bard asked.  "The goodwill of my allies and a fourteenth share of Erebor's gold will serve me better than any trinket, no matter how pretty to look at."

"Yes," Bilbo said, and he could think of nothing but the way that Thorin's lips would part with surprised pleasure, how his eyes would brighten at the sight of the Arkenstone sitting by his bedside. "Well. Yes."

On the other side of the campfire, Dwalin stood up. Likely he'd heard their entire conversation. "A word, Master Baggins."

He didn't sound particularly angry, but the words were enough to make Bilbo's heart flutter like an anxious hummingbird in his chest. He took another gulp from his mug and swallowed hard, then scrambled to his feet and followed Dwalin out of the warm circle of firelight, clutching the Arkenstone in his hands.  Dwalin walked fast, and Bilbo had to jog to keep up. They both stayed silent until they were well out of earshot of any potential eavesdroppers. 

Bilbo thought he was braced for anything, but he couldn't believe his ears when Dwalin rounded on him and said "That was a brave thing you just did, laddie."

"Thank you," Bilbo managed, but the words trailed off into a high, nervous question.

"Don't give me that," said Dwalin impatiently. "I'm not going to eat you. I'm not even going to shout at you."

"Oh. Well. That's good."

Dwalin sighed. "Look here. I can't promise you Thorin won't be angry, because I reckon he'll be furious. I've known him since I was a lad, and I've never met a dwarf prouder or more stubborn. But that doesn't mean he's always got the right of it. Kings are like that. My da was on Thrór's council, and sometimes it's all you can do to follow after them and pick up their messes."

It was the longest speech Bilbo had ever heard Dwalin make, and he fell silent at the end of it. Bilbo, in some mad flight of fancy, wondered if he had used up his supply of words for the day. "So you think I did right?" he asked, hardly daring to hope.

"I don't know," said Dwalin. "I can't say I'm fond of Bard. But he's a good fighter, and there are worse fellows to have outside your gates."  For a gruff, taciturn dwarf like Dwalin, that was practically a declaration of love.  He slung an arm around Bilbo's shoulders. "You keep on charming our neighbors, Mister Baggins. Leave Thorin and his sour temper to me."

"Right," Bilbo said, unsteadily.  "I think I can do that. And wait a moment," he added, struck with a sudden thought, "you said something about a king's council?"

* * *

 

Bard sat and poked restlessly at the fading embers, the remains of his breakfast forgotten at his side. His mind whirled with plans and speculations, and his body thrummed with happiness. He felt as if he had cast aside a terrible, unnamed burden, and the sudden lightness was almost more than he could stand.

Had there ever been a more beautiful dawn that the one rising up above the eastern spur of the mountain? The sky over the valley shone pink and gold, and he could imagine the ghostly roofs and towers of Dale glowing in such a sunrise. Children would dart through the streets, laughing and wrecking merry havoc. High above them banners would flutter in the wind, and soon the rest of city would be stirring too.

It was only a dream, but with a fourteenth of Erebor's gold and the goodwill of the dwarves, Bard could make it come true.

"I've never seen you smile like that before," Legolas said. The rest of the dwarves had drifted away soon after Dwalin and Bilbo left, and the rest of the gathering had followed suit. Legolas and Bard were the only two left.

"Am I smiling?" Bard asked. "Well. I suppose I am."

He looked up to see Legolas unwrapping a dripping red bandage from around his forearm. A long, half-healed gash, bleeding sluggishly, marred his pale skin.

"You should have that seen to," he said, startled back to reality by the sight.

Legolas shook his head. "It's nothing. A few of my stitches tore. I can tend to it myself."

Bard looked on while Legolas did just that, deftly cleaning and re-bandaging the wound. He might not have inherited his father's skill at healing, but he was competent enough, and he didn't flinch though the injury must have pained him. "You gave up the Arkenstone," he said, neatly stating the obvious. "Why?"

"Don't gloat. It doesn't suit you."

Legolas huffed a soft laugh. "I wasn't gloating. But I am glad. Dragons have a strange power over gold and jewels. Sometimes it lingers.  Perhaps we all needed an honest battle to clear our heads."

Bard was a proud man, and it wasn't in him to apologize. Instead, he sat across from the elven prince until the sky was shot through with pale color, both of them quiet, listening as the world woke up around them.

"Why do you owe Bilbo Baggins?" he asked eventually. "And why doesn't he know about it?"

Legolas drew his knees up to his chest. "It was during the battle," he said, quietly. "He saved my life. Or at least—I was going to be captured, I think. I don't remember it very well."

"I guess he doesn't either," Bard said.  Legolas, captured? Or killed? It didn't bear thinking about.

"He hit his head, and he was unconscious for hours. He doesn't remember anything after the first retreat on Raven Hill."

That explained something, at least. Bard had wondered more than once how Bilbo Baggins had persuaded the Elvenking to save Thorin's life. "Why haven't you told him?"

Legolas made a face. "King Thranduil doesn't like being in anyone's debt. He thinks it's degrading."

"It could have been worse," Bard said, aiming for good humor. "It could have been one of the dwarves who saved you.  I can't see the king liking _that_."

To his satisfaction, Legolas laughed.

* * *

 

Meanwhile, in Thorin's pavilion, Thranduil sat at the dwarven king's side, checking his pulse and examining his wounds as he did every morning.

"If you don't awaken soon, Thorin son of Thráin," he said, with no little humor, "you may open your eyes only to see your halfling become the accidental King under the Mountain. I daresay he would do the job better than you. Perhaps, if you are far luckier than you deserve, he will at least keep you from going the way of your grandfather."

And then, as if in response to his words, Thorin Oakenshield stirred.

 


	6. I Will Remain

Thorin had never been a deep sleeper. Even as a young boy he was easily disturbed, waking at small noises and in the middle of strange dreams. He'd been an only child for the first dozen years of his life, and slept alone in his room in the royal wing, separated from his parents and grandparents by walls of solid stone. Then his brother and sister were born, and he spent more time heating milk bottles and scaring away balrogs than he did sleeping. His parents had duties of their own, and no time to spend raising spare children.

For all the years after Smaug came down from the north, he slept only as a matter of duty: because his body was weak and would fail unless he did as it required. For Thorin, there were no soft mornings spent drowsing in the sunshine, and no quiet drift from sleep to waking.

This morning was no different. He waited for a moment, letting his surroundings wash over him. No one was nearby. No danger. Morning light pressed against his eyelids, and he ached all over, but that was nothing new.

Mahal. Another day. He opened his eyes. 

Then he remembered the battle.

The memories came in a rush. He jackknifed up, eyes snapping open, only to collapse back onto the cot he was lying on as pain overwhelmed him.  He blacked out.  When he awoke again, what felt like seconds later, the pain was still there.  He gritted his teeth to keep from crying out as he forced himself to sit up.

"Don't be an idiot," someone said, distantly. Did he know that voice? "Oh, curse it, you useless dwarf—stay down!"

Thorin did as he was told, vision darkening at the edges as he struggled to catch his breath. He ruthlessly suppressed his panic, forcing his thoughts into some kind of order. There was something, he knew, that needed to be dealt with. Something important.

Well, what _did_ he know? The light had changed since his first waking. It was early evening, and the air was cold but not bitter. He could hear the muffled sounds of conversation from outside the pavilion, but otherwise it was quiet.  His chest felt like someone had branded it with a hot iron. 

And, he realized, there was someone standing beside him.

"Finally," King Thranduil said, looming at his shoulder like a blond, bad-tempered ghost. "Do you have any notion how long I've waited for you to do something interesting?"

Thorin's heart pounded double-time in his chest. He wanted to curse at the elf, but his throat was as dry as old parchment and he couldn't speak a word.

"I've spent the last fortnight saving your kingdom and your life," Thranduil said as he poured a cup of water from a stoneware pitcher and handed it to Thorin. "You're welcome."

Thorin mouthed something very rude.

"Yes, I'll keep that in mind. Now drink that, else you'll pass out again."

The cup felt appealing cool to the touch, and the water sloshed inside. Abruptly, Thorin realized that he had never been so thirsty in his life. He put the cup to his lips with clumsy fingers, but he could only manage small sips and he spilled more than he drank.

"There. Now lie back down, and let me see if you've ripped any of your stitches."

"No," Thorin rasped, finding his voice at last. "Stay where you are."

"Don't be tiresome. If I wanted to hurt you I would have done so already, and saved myself a great deal of boredom.  You've been stirring for days, now, and woken three times, not that I expect you to remember it."

"I want to see Dain."

Thranduil sighed. "Dain is busy with his own affairs. I'll send word to your fellow dungeon escapees that you're awake, but only if you behave. Fair enough?"

Thorin conceded with ill grace. If what Thranduil said was true—and Thorin couldn't imagine his dwarves allowing the Elvenking anywhere near him, otherwise—he was well in the running for the greatest healer in Arda . Thorin had known that he was dying the moment that Azog buried that accursed mace in his chest. No one survived a wound like that. And yet here he was.

"Your luck holds," Thranduil said.  "This is healing well. I'll fetch one of your loyal subjects for you, as promised."

He left without another word, leaving Thorin lying alone in the pavilion. He had won the battle.  That much was obvious. But what else? He dwelt on a few wretched bits and pieces of memory while he waited, unable to turn his mind to anything but melancholy.

He thought of Kíli  lying dead in the dust, and Fíli howling over his corpse, broken sword in hand. Choking on his own blood as he lay helpless underneath a spiked mace. The Defiler's corpse, blood dripping from the gristly neck—beside it, an orc who cradled Azog's head in his massive hands and stared down at Thorin with raw dead hate. Those were his last memories of the battlefield.

How could he tell Dís that her sons had died under his command? He had wanted to give his family a home, to see his sister and her family safe and happy at last. That had been his fondest dream—that Dís would lead his Council and wear silver in her hair, while her boys saw Erebor proud and strong once more. Thorin had known how it would be. They would laugh at all the wrong times in meetings, and be fearless commanders, and charm the cooks into making their favorite foods. Day by day, they would learn to be kings.

It struck Thorin that he would never hear Kíli laugh again.

I'm sorry, sister, he thought. I'm so sorry. I've killed your sons.

* * *

It might have been second or hours later that Thranduil returned, Balin following close at his heels. Thorin looked at them dully.

"Oh, thank Mahal," Balin breathed, hurrying over to him. "Thorin!"

Thorin tried to smile, but he didn't have the heart for it. "Balin," he said. "It's—good to see you."

"And you, laddie. You've no idea how good it is. Should I bother asking how you feel?"

Thorin shook his head, and Balin's smile faded. "Of course not. Well, the elf says that you'll be on your feet again in a few days, provided you don't do anything too rash. You'll be wanting a full account of what's been happening, I suppose?"

Thorin could summon up anything more than a vague, morbid curiosity. He nodded anyway, but Balin had known him too long to be fooled by silence.

"He told you about the boys, then," Balin said. He turned to scowl at Thranduil, but the elf had vanished.

"He told me nothing. He didn't need to."

Balin frowned. "How do you mean?"

"I was there," Thorin snarled, roused to temper by Balin's insistence. Surely he, of all people, would understand that Thorin didn't want to talk about his nephews. "I saw it happen."

"Thorin, they're not dead."

For a long, horrible moment, Thorin was numb. He felt nothing at all.

"Fíli's as well as can expected. Kíli—well, he's still breathing, and that's more than anyone but his brother dared to hope."

"I saw it happen," said Thorin. "Azog ran Kíli through and hacked his arm off while he lay dying. Orcs cut Fíli down while he stood guard over us."

Balin shook his head. "Fíli's cut up, but nothing grievous. And running Kíli through would have been a difficult prospect, considering."

Thorin felt the first, faint stir of hope. "Considering?"

"He was wearing your old mithril hauberk, the one King Thrór had made for you when you came of age. Fíli found it when they went wandering during the siege. They meant to give it back to you, but you were a skinny thing in those days. It fit Kíli fair enough, though, and Fíli made him wear it into battle."

"What about his arm?"

"Gone below the elbow. Azog did enough damage to be going on with. The poor lad's battered and bruised and he almost bled out. He hasn't stirred since the battle."

"But there's a chance."

Balin hesitated, then nodded. "Yes. There's a chance."

Thorin realized that he was shaking. "I thought—Balin, I thought I'd killed them." He dragged a hand across his face, wiping away the tears that were threatening to fall. Then he took a deep breath and nodded sharply. "Enough of this. You promised me a full account."

"So I did," said Balin. "Forgive me. It's been eight days since the battle. Most of Thranduil's army is gone, although some of their wounded are still here—there was a skirmish on the road back to Mirkwood. Dain's soldiers have stayed, as have the Laketown men, and more of the survivors of Smaug's attack are arriving every day. We've been running joint patrols and tracking down the last of the goblins and wargs. Some have escaped into the Withered Heath, but most are dead."

"And our own losses?"

The look on Balin's face told Thorin all he wanted to know. "Bad. More than half of Dain's soldiers are dead, and ninety of Bard's men. A fourth of Thranduil's army killed, and as many wounded."

"Mahal," Thorin breathed. Even in Erebor, he had never won such a cruel victory. "So many?"

"By rights, we shouldn't be here," Balin said. "If it wasn't for the eagles, and for Beorn—"

"Yes, Dain told me," Thorin said. "Has any acknowledgement been made?"

"Beorn vanished the night after the battle. The eagles returned to their eyries soon after, though sometimes we see one or two hunting with our patrols in the Desolation."

"Gandalf will know how to send word to them. We owe them too much to let it pass without even a farewell."

"You'll give them gold?"

"I think we have enough of it to be generous, don't you?"

"Of course," Balin said, frowning a little. "But then—Bard and Thranduil?"

"Don't worry," Thorin said. "I have no intention of emptying our coffers to buy off scavengers. I will not offer insult to the kings and captains who fought alongside us, but my goodwill reaches no further than that."

"Ah," Balin said. It looked as if he was on the verge of commenting, but instead he only shrugged and changed the subject.  "The mountain is in a sad state. It will take decades to rebuild. We'll be able to winter inside, but it won't be pleasant, and after that—"

"It's up to me. Are you quite sure my wounds aren't fatal?" Thorin asked, thinking of the endless years of slogging work that lay ahead of him.

Balin grinned, suddenly looking as merry as the mischievous boy who had once tied the teenage Thorin's hair to the back of his Council chair. "Oh, no, sire, you're not getting out that easily. What was it my da used to say? 'You've found your metal, lad, and now you're beholden. You must buckle down and mine it.'"

Thorin's lips twitched into a faint answering smile. "I've won my kingdom, you mean, and now I must rule it."

"Take heart, your majesty. Soon the Elvenking will be gone, and with Dain marching home the Iron Hills, we'll have peace and quiet but for the hammering down in Dale. We can drink and sing odes to our victory and fall asleep on piles of gold."

"Not as comfortable for dwarves as dragons," Thorin said, absently. As a child, he had been locked in the treasury one too many times to cherish that particular daydream. Then he frowned. "Dale?"

"Ah. Yes." Balin hemmed and hawed for a moment. "Dale."

"It never bodes well when my oldest friend and chief advisor takes to shuffling and staring at the floor."

"Dale," Balin said again, contemplatively.

Thorin pushed himself into a sitting position, ignoring the grind of the half-healed bones inside his chest, as disconcerting as nails scraping against soft rock. "Surviving the Elvenking has not salved my patience. Speak."

Balin spoke, but reluctantly.  "Mister Baggins has formally given Bard of Laketown the right to build at our gates," he said, "with the blessings of the king and the goodwill of his people."

Thorin hadn't heard the ancient formalities in so many years that they sounded strange and stilted coming out of Balin's mouth. More than that, they made no sense. Balin might as well have said that Bilbo had taken to standing outside the pavilion and declaiming Khuzdul poetry.

"Bilbo," Thorin said, blankly. "He's done—what? No. He has no right."

"I'm afraid he does, Thorin."

"Only the king can give royal blessings to a venture, and only a king's Council can make a declaration of goodwill.  I would cut my own throat before letting that upstart soldier anywhere near Erebor, and my grandfather's lords are all dead. The Council can make no declarations because the Council doesn't exist!"

"Yes," said Balin. "Well."

"Of, for the love of— _just tell me_!" Thorin roared.  He was immediately seized by a violent coughing fit, his throat and lungs protesting the loud abuse after his long silence on the sickbed. "Don't," he rasped, when Balin rushed forward to help. "It's nothing. Just pour me some water."

Balin cast about, and found the pitcher that Thranduil had set aside. He poured a cupful for Thorin and then stood by his side, waiting helplessly while Thorin's lungs tried to claw their way up his throat. Eventually the fit subsided. Thorin slumped back against the blankets, breathing hard, and took the water from Balin with trembling hands.

"Tell me," he said again, and this time Balin obeyed.

"You gave Bilbo leave to bestow a king's blessing when you told Dain that he would speak for you. During your convalescence, our burglar made use of his rights. He gave Dale and a fourteenth of the treasure to Bard, and seated a Council in your name."

"No," said Thorin. "I don't believe it."

It was absurd. Balin was playing a trick, nothing more. Bilbo would never do such a thing. Thorin remembered, with a sharp haunting clarity, the way that Bilbo had knelt at his side and wept. How Bilbo's hand had run through his coarse ragged hair, blood drying on his fingers like flakes of rust. Thorin remembered closing his eyes, lost in the distant wash of grief, pain and misery carrying him out to sea—and Bilbo the one fixed point in the world, a rock to cling onto, something small and sturdy.

Bilbo wouldn't betray him. Not again. 

A glimpse of moonlight shone through the pavilion entrance, and Thorin saw something glimmering at the side of his makeshift bed.  It was the Arkenstone. Thorin stared at it for a long time, strangely unwilling to even pick it up."Bilbo Baggins, you little fool," he said at last, more to himself than anyone else.

"Is there anything I can do?" Balin asked, tentatively.

"Yes," Thorin said. "I'll take care of our burglar myself, but that can wait. In the meantime, I want to see my nephews."

Balin looked at him sharply. "I don't think that's wise, do you? The elf said—"

"Balin. Do as I say."

Balin sighed. "I'll see if I can bring Fíli. But I can't promise I'll be able to. He won't leave Kíli's side, not for anything. Bilbo held our first Council meeting in their tent, because it's the only way he'll attend. None of us complained, of course."

"You're appointed? In your father's name, I suppose. Good. You can keep Dain's lords in order."

"None of Dain's lords are on the Council," Balin said, an odd note in his voice.

Thorin frowned. His grandfather's lords were dead. Their heirs were scattered from the Iron Hills to Ered Luin. Of the Company, only Balin and Dwalin had any claim. Thorin had assumed that Dain lent Bilbo some of his lords in order to form a temporary assembly, but if that wasn't true, then who had the hobbit appointed? Seats on the King's Council couldn't be handed out on a whim. The Council was the government of Erebor, and the dwarves who served on it were ennobled by default. They had titles, land, hereditary honors and positions—the most important decision a newly-crowned king made was choosing the dwarves of his Council.

Thorin closed his eyes. "Tell me that Bilbo didn't appoint my entire Council. Please, Balin. Tell me that."

Balin's silence was profoundly telling.

"I'm going to kill him," said Thorin grimly. "I am going to feed him to a dragon, or give him to the orcs, or take him back up to the battlements and pitch him off. Does he have any _idea_ what kind of trouble he's caused?"

"No, though I've tried to explain it to him. You should know who he picked. It might—I don't know if it will cheer you up or not."

"Very well. Who?"

"You can't blame him entirely," Balin said. "As far as he was concerned, it made sense. Dwalin was explaining what a traditional Council was like. Bilbo asked how many lords there were, and it's thirteen, of course, and the king makes fourteen. Any less is ill luck. And so Bilbo cast around for thirteen trustworthy dwarves, and it occurred to him that—well."

"Oh, you must be joking," Thorin said, when he realized what Balin was implying. "The Company?"

If Thorin didn't know better, he would have thought that Balin was repressing a smile. "The Company," he agreed. "Twelve dwarves, a hobbit, and their king. Tinkers, toymakers, petty criminals, and mad old warriors all. Congratulations, sire."

Thorin wished, with all his heart, that he was still blessedly unconscious.


	7. King and Council

Balin left soon after that, with strict orders to tell no one that Thorin was awake. He solemnly promised to keep quiet, but Thorin wasn't surprised when Dwalin sauntered into the pavilion later that same evening, blithely ignoring the complaints of not one, but two, irritated kings. 

"I thought the elder son of Fundin was your most trusted advisor," Thranduil said, raising his eyebrows as he surveyed Dwalin from the top of his bald, tattooed head to the toes of muddy boots. "But it seems he cannot keep the rabble out."

Dwalin didn't spare Thranduil so much as a glance. He shoved past him and headed straight for Thorin.

"What are you doing here?" Thorin said, grumpily. He didn't bother to sit up this time. He hurt too much, and besides, it was Dwalin. Neither of them were much for standing on ceremony, at least not with each other.

Dwalin grinned. "Nice to see you too, your majesty."

"Don't call me that until you can say it with a straight face."

"As you like. You're always so sweet-tempered on the sickbed." Dwalin turned around to look at Thranduil, who was sorting through a chest of medical supplies. "Don't you have someplace else to be?"

"I certainly hope you're not talking to me," Thranduil said.

Dwalin, brave but not foolish, didn't press the matter. He turned back to Thorin. "You look like shit. I reckon you feel like shit, too."

"I'm not the one with the broken nose." Thorin couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Dwalin smile or jest. The journey to Erebor had darkened even the youngest and cheeriest of the dwarves, and Dwalin was neither. But now he seemed almost jovial, and his good spirits were contagious. "You're dripping blood," he added.

"Am I? Oh. Your hobbit's been teaching us Shire games." Dwalin poked experimentally at his swollen nose. "Didn't realize it was still bleeding."

"He's not my hobbit. Or if he is, he's no great treasure." Thorin had learned once again the risks of putting his faith in Bilbo Baggins. This time, at least, his disappointment was tempered by that knowledge that Bilbo was only trying to help.  Failing miserably, but trying nevertheless. Thorin might have been charmed, if only the hobbit hadn't caused so much trouble.

Then the import of Dwalin's words caught up to him. He frowned. "Wait. You broke your nose playing a halfling's game?"

Dwalin grinned. "We might have fiddled with the rules a bit. Only a bit, mind."

It was just like Dwalin to turn some harmless pastime into an excuse for brawling. Thorin reached out to clasp one of Dwalin's hands, chest suddenly tight with affection for the battered old warrior standing in front of him. 

Balin's news had put Thorin in a bad humor. For a time he had been turning the Arkenstone over and over in his hands, thinking of his nephews and the carrion birds that were doubtless crowing over the battlefield. Only Thranduil's complaints had kept him from sinking into a black depression. But now his oldest friend was beside him, and the world seemed a little less bleak.  "It's good to see you," he said. 

Dwalin let go of his hand and sat down beside him. Thorin felt a momentary pang at the loss of contact; it was the first friendly touch he had felt since he'd opened his eyes. But a moment later Dwalin leaned forward, and knocked their heads together gently, and his voice was even rougher than usual when he said, "You too, sire."

It took longer than it should have for Thorin to pull back. "I hope you haven't brought me more bad news," he said.

"Balin told you about Dale, then."

"Dale, yes. And my new Council. And—how did he put it? 'The strange encounter with the elves on the marshes', he said, which sounds more like a fireside tale than a battle."

"You know my brother. Thinks he's too clever by half."

"He usually is. But not clever enough to stop our hobbit from running riot over two thousand years of tradition."

"Ah," Dwalin said knowingly. "So he's not _your_ hobbit but _ours_?"

"He's nobody's hobbit but his own," said Thranduil from the other side of the pavilion, shutting the medicine chest so hard that the wood cracked.  "As you would know, son of Thráin, if only you spent less time thinking on your own importance."

"Mind your tongue," Thorin snapped, just as Dwalin muttered, "By the Maker, how can you stand him?"

Thranduil shot them a sharp look, but Thorin could have sworn that the corners of his mouth were twitching.

"With about as much difficulty as I endure him," Thranduil said, straightening. "But you are right, Master Dwarf, to wonder why I linger here. I have better things to do than sit around and listen to your king whine like a child."

His parting jab was somewhat spoiled when he paused at the entrance, sighed, and added: "The guards will know where I am. Send one of them to find me if he needs a healer."

The moment the elf was gone, Dwalin burst out laughing.  "If you two aren't careful," he choked out, "you'll wind up getting along."

Thorin glowered. "Don't be absurd."

"You're a matched set. Sullen boys, the both of you."

Thorin would never admit, even to Dwalin, that fighting with Thranduil kept his mind from settling too long on grim thoughts, and that sometimes Thranduil had been almost kind. It was nonsense to think such things. Thranduil had turned his back on Thorin's kin, had betrayed and imprisoned them, had laid siege to their kingdom. Nothing would change that.  It was bad enough that the Elvenking had saved Thorin's life not once, but twice. According to Balin, the elven army had driven Bolg and his surviving goblins from the field, and there was no dishonor in that.

But the thought of the Elvenking attending him on the sickbed, as if he were an ailing child to be coddled and cosseted—the shame of it burned at him.

"Ach, just ignore me," Dwalin said. "I was only making fun."

"Never mind that," said Thorin. He would pay his debt to the Elvenking, however unwelcome it was. But until he was crowned and seated in Erebor, and the rest of his kin safe within the mountain walls, he had more important things to think on. "You have other excuses to make, surely?"

Dwalin tried to look innocent and only succeeded a little. "Can't imagine what you mean,"

"Don't bother. Balin's already said that you're the one who put the notion of a council in Bilbo's head. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that Bilbo Baggins was the best thing to happen to us since you found Gandalf getting drunk at a tavern in Bree."

"Mahal, not you too," Thorin said. "You sound just like the elf."

"Sorry," Dwalin said. "But it's true. And he's not half bad at what he does."

"Your brother disagrees."

"Balin's a stuffy old conservative. It would take more than a hundred years in exile to blow the dust off him. Who were you going to put on the Council, anyway? All the grasping old nobles that your cousin doesn't want to deal with?"

"Dís," Thorin said, temper flaring. "And you, and Balin, and yes, some of Dain's lords."

"You know what the politicians are like, Thorin. Give them a copper and they'll empty your pockets. You could do worse that to keep folk you trust nearby."

"The hobbit had no right to make that choice, and you had no right to let him."

"I'll own to my part. But someone had to do something, and I figured you'd rather have us looking after things. It was Bilbo or Dain. If you hadn't told Dain that the hobbit would speak for you—if Dain wasn't so damned honorable—you might've woken up to something you fancied even less."

"Something worse than seeing that upstart Laketown soldier welcomed at my gates? I wonder that such misfortune is to be found."

"Bard did us wrong, sure enough." Dwalin was faltering a little. He wasn't one for speeches. "Coming to the mountain with a whole army at his back, trying to take what otherwise we might've given. But we didn't treat them any too kindly, either. Smaug did them as much wrong as he ever did us. There were women and little ones going hungry, and good soldiers hurt—"

"The elves sent them aid. And we numbered only fourteen. Should we have left the mountain and walked back to Laketown to listen to them weep?"

Dwalin straightened his shoulders. "We should have done something. Anything."

"And I thought you were on my side," Thorin snapped. He was sharp with the sting of betrayal, but he regretted the words as soon as he spoke them.

There was a long, unpleasant pause.

"That's quite a thing to say to me," Dwalin said, slowly and deliberately. "To me, mind. Who else in this godsforsaken life has stuck with you like I have?"

Who else, indeed?  Thorin stared down at his scarred hands resting above the coverlet. He couldn't bring himself to look the other dwarf in the eyes. It was one thing to accuse Bilbo of treachery, but Dwalin was a cousin—distant, perhaps, but still a cousin—and no one in his right mind would ever think him disloyal to the line of Durin.

But then, he thought, it's been a long time since you were in your right mind, Thorin son of Thráin, son of mad king Thrór.  "That was unjust," he said aloud. "Forgive me."

The hard line of Dwalin's mouth softened at that. "You've had a rough fortnight."

Had it been so long? Eight days since the battle, Balin had said, and that made it at least fourteen since the joined armies of Bard and Thranduil had first laid siege to Erebor. It occurred to Thorin for the first time that he had survived. He had avenged his grandfather's death and his father's shame. His long exile was over. The war was done, and now he was a king. Not a prince in exile, or a warlord, or a soldier on the field.

He was not even a blacksmith anymore.

It was a strange, unsettling thought.

"Well, never mind that," Thorin said again, ignoring the cold sliver of fear that pricked his heart. What was there for him to be afraid of? He was a king now, and his enemies slain. "You've taken the hobbit's part, and I suppose you had your reasons. You're cleverer than Balin gives you credit for, to corner me now. I'm too tired and wretched to be as angry as I should."

Dwalin settled down more comfortably on the hard ground. "I suppose we'd best have a proper talk," he said. "There's plenty Balin hasn't told you, I wager.  You've been drifting in and out for days, and we had ourselves a merry time while we waited for you to come around."

* * *

**_Earlier that day_ **

The Elvenking had kept a close eye on Thorin since the morning of the skirmish in the marshes, and for forty long hours he and Bilbo had taken turns keeping vigil at his bedside, coaxing the dwarf back to himself.

It was not a pleasant time for Bilbo, despite his joy at Thorin's imminent recovery. He slept only fitfully, and his dreams were uneasy and terrifying by turns. The headaches which had troubled him the first night after the battle returned with a vengeance. It was normal, Thranduil assured him, after a blow to the head; the symptoms would fade in time, though it might take weeks or even months. Thranduil could do nothing for them except offer a vial of reddish-brown liquid that he promised would relieve the pain.  After the first dose, Bilbo returned the bottle. The medicine dulled his mind even more than the pain did, and he hated how slow and sluggish he felt after taking it. 

"I just don't have the time to be tired," Bilbo told Thranduil.  He was sitting beside Thorin, as usual, watching as the dwarven king shifted, slipping between waking and sleeping. "Don't worry. I'll manage."

Thranduil sighed and picked up the vial that Bilbo had abandoned. It was only a few ruddy drops short of full. "I am not worried, halfling. I am vexed. I thought you had more sense than your dwarven companions, but you share their stubbornness. You are not an elf to forgo sleep for days at a time, or a dwarf to fast without becoming faint."

"I just want to be useful. And why do you get to complain? If anyone's been running me ragged with petty work, it's you."

"Fetching meals and correspondence is precisely the kind of work that you should be doing. Instead, you insist on fussing over politics and getting tangled up in the affairs of your betters."

"If I didn't know better, your majesty, I might think you were worried about me," said Bilbo.  "And Thorin and the other dwarves, too."

"And now the child is going mad," Thranduil said, to no one in particular. He waved Bilbo away with a flick of one pale hand. "Shoo. Your king will be awake soon enough, and I have no patience for halflings who run around talking nonsense."

"That's me," Bilbo said. "Mad Baggins."

He clambered to his feet, swaying a little, and shrugged on the battered old coat that Bofur had scrounged up for him after the battle. It was far too large, but with winter settling in to stay, Bilbo only cared that it was warm.  He hadn't asked what happened to the coat's previous owner. "We're having our first Council meeting this afternoon, if you want to come watch the fireworks."

"Mithrandir's province, not mine," Thranduil said. "Good luck and good riddance."

Bilbo left. The cold was bracing, and he threw himself against the wind with all the liveliness he could muster. The narrow winding streets of the encampment felt almost settled, these days. The most enterprising dwarves had scrounged up supplies for more permanent shelters, and the pathways were worn and rutted with the tread of hundreds of booted feet. Dain, once he'd heard that Bilbo wanted to appoint a Council, offered him use of the spacious tent where he met his own commanders. Bilbo had run dozens of messages there, and so he let his feet lead him thoughtlessly down the familiar paths.  He rounded a corner, his head down against the wind—only to run smack into a short dwarf with very well-polished armor. Knocking a dwarf off his feet was like knocking a mountain off its foundations, but Bilbo wasn't so sturdy: he bounced off the dwarf's breastplate and lost his balance, tumbling hard to the ground.

"Watch where you're walking," Lord Varin said. He didn't offer Bilbo a hand up.

Bilbo wasn't oblivious to the slight, and he scrambled to his feet, lips pressed tight. This particular noble was one of the wealthiest and oldest on Dain's own Council, and he'd made no secret of his distrust of Bilbo, or his frank disbelief than a dwarf with Thorin's honored lineage would have anything to do with a hobbit. "A thieving little creature," Bilbo had once overheard Lord Varin say, "with nothing to recommend him but the weakness of a wounded king. You needn't indulge him, my lord Dain—that sort will take what they can get." 

"I'm quite all right," Bilbo said now, brushing away the worst of the dirt.  "No need to worry about me!"  He was a grown hobbit, and he certainly wasn't about shed tears over childish insults, but he couldn't deny a certain childishness of his own. "But did I get a bit of mud on your armor?  Oh, no.  My mistake.  It's only rust."

Dwarves were sensitive about their prowess in battle, and Varin obviously felt himself somewhat lacking: had neither fought at Moria nor borne witness to Erebor's ruination, and his armor, while doubtlessly fine, hadn't seen battle in a century.  Bofur and the others delighted in telling the dwarves of the Iron Hills about the glories and triumphs of their journey eastward, making much of their many adventures and slipping over the less flattering tales: the trolls were noticeable by their absence.   But Varin was a stately old fellow, for all his peevishness, and he only sniffed and pushed on by.

Bilbo whistled as he stepped back onto the path, though the cheerful tune was lost to the wind.  He was looking forward to his Council, even though Balin had made it uncomfortably clear how many liberties he was talking with dwarven customs. Maybe he should have done as Balin suggested and taken a few of Dain's lords—on loan, as it were. But Bilbo couldn't stomach the idea of trusting complete strangers with Erebor. Thorin's companions had followed him across the Misty Mountains, across months of hardship and hundreds of miles. If that wasn't a satisfactory test of loyalty, then Bilbo didn't know what was.  At least, he thought, stepping inside the tent that Dain had lent them, his Council would be sure to get along.

Less than an hour later, the last Bilbo's misplaced confidence had utterly, entirely, and comprehensively vanished. 

Well, it was a nice idea, he told himself, ducking as Oín's hearing trumpet soared overhead and connected squarely with Nori's jaw. 

Perhaps he shouldn't have started their first meeting with such a touchy subject. But the question had been such an obvious one: what, by all that was holy, was the Company going to do with their gold? 

None of them, except perhaps for Balin and Dwalin, had realized quite how vast a quantity of wealth they were now masters of.  When Ori had attempted to calculate his own worth, he'd spent a few a few minutes scribbling numbers into his journal, then—once he'd checked and rechecked the sum total—turned deadly pale and practically toppled off his chair.  The trouble came when Bilbo pointed out that if each of them took their fourteenths, Thorin would be left with a fraction of his inheritance to rebuild Erebor. Even if Bilbo gave his share to pay off their debt to Bard, the coffers would be practically empty.

"It wasn't very well thought out," Bilbo had said, with all the unwanted wisdom of hindsight.  "You can't just carve up the wealth of an entire kingdom like a blueberry pie, can you?" 

"I signed that contract same as you, and I earned that fourteenth," Nori said defensively.  "I fought and bled the same as any of you. Don't you fuss none about how much it is, or how I plan to spend it. That's my concern."

Balin frowned. "You could buy Ered Luin twice over with that much money."

"Maybe I will," Nori retorted. "Why not?"

"Well, I'm staying with Thorin," Bofur put in. He looked questioningly at Bombur and Bifur. They nodded. "We got no use for those sort of riches. I say we let Thorin keep our shares—well, saving a few coins for needful things. I wouldn't mind having a fancy fur coat and a new hat and a new pair of boots, like. And ma's got some debts. It'd ease her mind to have them all paid off."

Glóin nodded approvingly. "Aye, we're lords now. That means land of our own, and mineral rights. We'll have money of our own once we open the old mines up and get folk to work them. Me and my wife, we just want to see our boy looked after. I didn't come along for the money, though I like it well enough."

"Not to say that it wouldn't be nice to have," Oín said hastily, lest his brother commit them too firmly to poverty. 

Balin and Dwalin exchanged a look. "Our father had wealth of his own," Balin said. "We'll take what we're owed by right of lordship, but no more. We don't need the whole of our shares, not by my any means."

"Why bother with any of it?" said Dwalin, dismissive. "We've got no folk to look after, not like father did—no guardsmen to keep, no sworn subjects. What do we need any of his wealth for? It didn't bring him any great happiness that I can recollect."

Balin frowned. "We'll be proper nobles one day, with households and subject of our own. Then we'll be glad of the money."

"You'll be a proper noble, maybe. I don't fancy lording it over anyone."

"Well, you two do what you like," Nori said. "But I'm keeping mine, and so are my brothers, and I'll make it damned unpleasant for anyone who gets a notion to take what's ours."

Oín snorted. "So says the thief."

Nori made an abortive lunge across the table. Oín stood to meet him. Glóin hauled Nori back before either of them could land a blow.

"I'm not saying anything about taking anyone's share," Bilbo said, raising his hands defensively. "I'm just saying it's a lot of money, and maybe we should think about what we're going to do with it."

"It's in the contract," Dori said, fluttering his hands anxiously. "We all signed it, after all."

 _Contract_ became the watchword of the meeting. It was repeated over and over again by the dwarves who thought they had every right to the whole of their shares, thank you very much. Nori was the most vocal of that camp.  A handful of other dwarves, led by Balin, argued with increasing pointedness that they had more important things to worry about, and that Erebor wasn't going to rebuild itself, and hoarding so much of the mountain's gold was nothing more than selfishness.

"It's fine for you lot to talk about being selfish," said Nori, savagely. "You're the sons of nobles, and Thorin's cousins besides. You've got money aplenty back home. But lords forbid the common folk get their hands in the royal coffers, even if they've risked their lives for the privilege!"

"You're a lord yourself now," Dwalin pointed out. "Same as Balin and me, if that's what you're fretting over."

"Oh, I'm a noble, certain sure. Lord Nori the thief. Lord Nori of the gutter! This Council's a patch job and it won't last two minutes once the likes of Dain and Lord Varin get Thorin's ear. We'll be out on _our_ ears like that." Nori snapped his fingers. "So I'll take my fourteenth and go back home to the Blue Mountains, thanks all the same. I'm not waiting around for Mahal's hammer to fall."  He turned to Bofur and his brothers. "You lot would come with us, if you have any sense. You've got even less of a lineage than we do, and that's saying something. How long do you figure the nobles keep you around? They think folk like us dirty up the air just by breathing it."

"Mind who you're talking about," Dwalin said. "Since when has anyone here treated you anything but fair? Thorin didn't say one word against you when you signed on. So you've been poor. Most of us have, one time or another. You think Thorin's never gone hungry?"

"No, but he never had to beg for his bread, I shouldn't think," Dori said.  "Or steal it. Begging your pardon, but you don't know what it's like. And not everyone's as decent as you, Mister Dwalin. There's always merchants and nobles who look down on folk like us. Who's to say Erebor won't be more of the same?"

After that, Bilbo couldn't get a word in edgewise, no matter how hard he tried. After the first hour of petty arguments, broken up only by the occasional tussle and his vain pleas for order, Bilbo threw up his hands and stomped out of the tent.  Just like the Sackville-Bagginses, he thought. Fighting over the money, of all things, when there was more than enough for everyone and Bilbo had never once suggested breaking anyone's contract. He had known that his friends were fractious, and more apt to argue than get along. But this was absurd.

He wandered a little way down the path, his hands shoved in his coat pockets. What a miserable start!  As soon as Thorin was awake and back on his feet, he could take charge, and Bilbo wished him the joy of it. Until then, Bilbo would just have to manage as best he could.

He settled down in a quiet corner a few hundred feet from the meeting tent, thinking hard. Nori and the others weren't causing trouble for the sake of it.  Someone like Lord Varin would be glad to see Nori and his brothers thrown off the Council, and Bilbo still wasn't certain that Thorin wasn't going to banish _him_ , when it came down to it.  But the real problem, Bilbo thought, was the shouting.  The Company had fought goblins side by side, and journeyed together for months, and won a great battle against terrible odds. They loved their king. Even Nori, for all his bluster, would have died for Thorin a dozen times over—Bilbo was certain of it.

But dwarves were headstrong and touchy at the best of times. Thorin had been able to control them; Gandalf could scare them into behaving with his thundering voice and looming presence. Bilbo, neither a king nor a wizard, would have to bully and cajole his council into getting alone. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a familiar figure. Lord Varin, resplendent as always in his bejeweled armor, was speaking in low tones to a dwarf that Bilbo vaguely recognized as a herald. The herald had a sheaf of papers in his hand.

And quite suddenly, Bilbo had an idea.

In for an apple, in for the orchard, as his mother used to say. If he was going to lead meetings of a King's Council, he might as well make a proper show of it.

He waited until Varin had left, and the herald settled into his work. Then he pounced.

When he returned to the meeting tent half an hour later, he had a scrap of used parchment in his hands. Varin's herald followed reluctantly at his heels.  The argument had dissolved into a general melee. The noise was deafening, and as far as Bilbo could tell, none of the dwarves had even noticed his absence. When Bilbo's request for silence went unheard in the din, he nodded to the herald, who scowled but obediently blew a long, loud blast on his horn.

"If you would all please be quiet," he said, in the stunned silence that followed.

The dwarves, many of them still clutching their ears and wincing, obeyed.

"Here," Bilbo said, brandishing his little piece of parchment. "Meetings ought to have rules, I should think.  I don't know any, and apparently you lot don't know any either—or if you do, you're ignoring them.  So I made some up.  Now you get to follow them."

He handed the list to Balin, whose eyebrows were raised almost to his hairline. He scanned the parchment, and his surprise quickly turned into grandfatherly condescension. He passed it to Dwalin, who read the first sentence and snorted with laughter, and so on round the circle, until it came to Ori, who studied the document carefully, most likely committing the entire thing to memory, before handing it back to Bilbo.

"Right," Bilbo said decisively, before anyone else had the chance to speak. "Like it or not, you are the King's Council of Erebor. You stand for Thorin, just as much as I do, and Thorin will be judged by what we do. If we become fodder for gossip, a laughingstock, you're not shaming yourselves. You're shaming him, and his father, and his grandfather. So that's that."

Dwalin opened his mouth to speak. Bilbo shushed him, like a parent telling off an unruly child. Dwalin blinked, but kept his silence.

"Second," Bilbo said, relentless, "We're going to settle down and act like civilized folk instead of pretending to be a gang of ruffians at a tavern brawl. Third, you're going to _stop hitting your brother,_ Nori, he's only rude to you because he loves you and he's spent the last twenty years afraid that one day you'll be caught and hanged for stealing or smuggling or worse. Finally, we're going to get something done. Something useful. I don't know what, precisely, but we had better come up with something. Because that's what you're here for and that's what _I'm_ here for and I have an appalling headache, so the next person who looks crossways at me is going to regret it."

The dwarves stared.  Bilbo's bravado threatened to crumple like a tin cup in a dragon's claws, but he kept his chin up and ignored the fact that his hands, clutching tight to the parchment, were trembling.

"Can I go now?" the herald asked, sullenly. "Or are you conscripting me into this madhouse, too?"

"Thank you, but that's quite unnecessary," Bilbo said.  The herald offered a perfunctory bow and took his leave.  No doubt he was making a beeline for Lord Varin, to complain about hobbits and their strange ways.

"Well, let's get on with it, lads," Bofur said once he was gone. "We can fight on our own time.  The lad's right. It's our job to look after things until Thorin's on his feet again, isn't it? And I reckon there's no shortage of things that need looking after."

Things got easier after that. There was less squabbling, at least, and Bilbo did away with the last of the shouting when he impulsively decided to relocate to Fíli and Kíli's tent. After all, he reasoned, if Fíli couldn't leave his brother to attend meetings, then they would simply have to bring the meetings to Fíli. He had worried at first that it might bother Kíli, but Oín shook his head and told Bilbo not to fret.  "It'll do the lads good to have friends about them again," he said. "Aulë made our ancestors all seven together, after all." It was an old dwarvish proverb, and no one contradicted him.

As it turned out, the relocation was a stroke of accidental genius on Bilbo's part. All it took was one quiet plea from Fíli—"I'm glad you're here, but keep quiet for my brother, would you?"—and all the other dwarves were as polite as if Gandalf had transformed them into a company of mice. 

That evening, some of the dwarves were still debating over their suppers in the mess hall, but the last lingering tension was quick to fade. 

"Do you want me to write up the first half of the meeting?" Ori asked, handing Bilbo a small loaf of bread and an unappetizing potato. Bilbo had appointed Ori to keep meeting minutes, mostly to give the shy young dwarf something to do. "Only I wasn't taking notes, so I won't get it quite right."

Bilbo poked at his meager fare. "Er. I don't think that's necessary, Ori." There was no point in recording their incompetence for future generations. "We'll start afresh at tomorrow's meeting, how about that?"

Their plates were barely empty before the cooks kicked them out of the mess for taking up too much space. Bilbo dawdled, uncertain whether to keep his friends company or return to Thorin's side. Before he could make up his mind, Bofur grabbed him by the arm and tugged him along.

"You've been keeping company with kings and princes far too long, laddie. Surely you can spare an hour or two for your sorry old friends?"

Bofur sounded so hopeful that Bilbo couldn't deny him. "I'd like that," he said. It was only a small lie, and it wasn't as if Thorin would notice his absence. 

They wandered out into the open air, jostling through the crowded encampment in search of some open ground. The last colors of sunset were fading to blues and blacks, and the night promised to be bitter. Bilbo huddled in his coat, grateful for Bofur's friendly arm around his shoulders. Dwarves didn't feel the cold as hobbits did.

"I fear our time in the Blue Mountains has turned you soft, brother," Balin said as they walked. Dwalin, who had been grumbling about the weather, immediately fell silent.

Bilbo shivered. "Surely this sort of weather isn't usual. It's still late autumn, by Shire standards."

Balin laughed. "Why, this is hardly more than a cold snap. But don't fret, Master Burglar. We'll be snug inside the mountain before the blizzards come down from the Heath."

"Back home, children go out and play in the snow," Bilbo said, a little wistful.  "And pretend to be dragons when they do their chores, because their breath mists in the air."

Dwalin fell back to walk beside Bilbo and Bofur. "I used to do that," he said gruffly. "When I was a lad."

"Someday there will be children living here again," said Balin. He looked up at the mountain and shook his head. "I can't imagine it. There are still bodies in the halls."

"We'll manage," Bilbo said stoutly. Shouts and good-natured protests broke out from the dwarves ahead of them, and Bilbo peered ahead into the gathering dark to see what the trouble was. Apparently Glóin had run into one of his cousins, and was treating him to a headlock by way of a greeting. "Or at least we might, if only we could stop fighting for more than a few minutes at a time."

"You can't blame the boys for acting out," said Dwalin. "Boredom settles in quick when there's nothing to do but laze about."

Except for the soldiers assigned to patrols and hunting parties, everyone was stuck at the foot of the mountain with nothing to do except drink, play dice, and sharpen their weapons. There was no question of Dain returning to the Iron Hills, at least not yet. The treasure of Erebor no longer had a dragon to guard it, after all, and Bolg was still lurking somewhere in the Desolation. But in the absence of any better entertainment, the dwarves made their own, and petty fights were always breaking out among the less disciplined soldiers. According to Dain, there was nothing worse for discipline than an army sitting idle; Dwalin seemed to agree.

"When hobbits are bored, they play games or gossip or tend their gardens," Bilbo said. "Maybe I should start a scandal. Or I could show you how to make daisy chains, or teach you how to play Tig."

Dwalin never looked more terrifying than when he grinned. "Most dwarven sport is fighting, one way or another."

"I can't imagine why I'm not surprised," Bilbo said.

Eventually, they found their patch of bare ground and settled down for the evening, far enough away from the sleeping tents that no one could complain about the noise keeping folk awake. Oín and Glóin got a fire going, more for Bilbo's sake than anyone else.

"Do you know," Bofur said presently, "I keep on forgetting that we've won. And then I remember, and it's right strange to think about. I'm home at last, but it don't feel like home yet. And I haven't the foggiest notion what to do with myself now that I'm here. It's funny, isn't it?" He sounded simultaneously pleased and baffled.

"Don't go getting philosophical on us," Bombur said, tossing a pebble in his brother's general direction.

Bofur deftly caught it and lobbed it back. "Oh, and did you trip over a right proper education on your way to the mess tonight?"

"Don't start," Bilbo said.  His headache was returning with a vengeance. "I really will start a scandal. Or teach you to play Tig."

Balin smiled and gave Bilbo a reassuring pat on the back. "You're already a scandal," he said. "But what's this Tig you're talking about?"

"Oh, it's just a silly children's game."  He explained the rules to the listening dwarves.  Bofur looked delighted. 

"I should've been born a hobbit," he declared. "But it's never too late, is it? I want to play."

Bilbo laughed. But Bofur was in earnest, and soon he had rounded up the rest of the dwarves, dragging them to their feet and organizing them into teams with manic energy.  Balin was the only one who demurred—apart from Bilbo, of course, who watching with no little bemusement. "There are no teams in Tig," he said.

"But we get to make up the rules, don't we?" Bofur said. "And I say there should be teams. All proper games have teams."

Bilbo gave up. He was uncomfortably aware of how very much commotion they would soon be making, and a prim little voice that sounded disturbingly like his father was reminding him that gentlefolk didn't make spectacles of themselves in public. If he wanted his Council to be respectable then surely they shouldn't be causing such a stir.

But Dwalin was right. The shine of the victory was fading. Everyone in the encampment was restless and bored, the dwarves most of all. Besides, Tig was a fine game. The dwarves could do with a few more hobbitish customs, and this was as good a start as any.

It took two broken noses before the game gathered a crowd, but it was only after a string of uncommonly foul curses—from Ori, to his eldest brother's horror—before the first of Dain's soldiers demanded that they be let in on the fun, as well. The real surprise came when a few of the Laketown men, curious about the commotion and hoping to find a brawl, settled down beside Bilbo and asked how the game worked.

"It's like something we play in the spring carnival," one of them said. Bilbo recognized him as one of Bard's friends. "Only without the ball, and—oh. Why did he just tackle him?"

"I haven't the foggiest," Bilbo said honestly. "I think Dwalin just likes tackling people, actually."

"Sounds like my kind of game," one of the men said, grinning. "Can we give it a go?"

"As you like, I guess. Dwalin!"

"Eh?"

"Would you mind a few more players?"

"They're welcome, so long as they're not bothered by pain," Dwalin said, blood still streaming from his broken nose.

It was twilight when the game began, and the dwarves showed no signs of quitting when night settled over the encampment. Most of the Laketown soldiers gave up and returned to the sidelines, bruised and exhausted, but a few stubborn men kept up the fight.

"I can't hardly see you," Bard's friend complained, after Bofur had knocked him down and shouted a gleeful "Tig!" before vanishing into the darkness.

"Dwarves are good at seeing things in the dark," Bilbo called, amused in spite of himself. "It comes from spending more time below ground than above it."

"Good to know. Gav, why do I do this to myself?" he asked plaintively, as one his fellows offered him a hand.

"Your ma dropped you on the head as a boy," Gav said. "Up you get, and help me beat these bastards."

Glóin took advantage of their momentary distraction to shove them both to the ground in a tangle of long limbs and cursing. "And watch who you're calling bastards!"

"Are we tigged, then?" Gav asked, breathlessly, propping himself up on one elbow. "Or was that a tog?"

The other man sighed. "How should I know?"

This time, he didn't bother trying to get up.

Bilbo was still laughing when an elf he didn't recognize hurried up to stand beside them. "I was sent to fetch Balin son of Fundin," the elf said in low tones. The rest of the dwarves, still busy breaking one another's heads, didn't hear. "Straight away, my lord Thranduil said."

Balin might have been offended by the presumption that the Elvenking could simply demand his presence, but there was no doubt in Bilbo's mind that it had something to do with Thorin. Balin must have come to the same conclusion.   He went along without protest.

Thranduil hadn't asked for Bilbo, but if Thorin was conscious at last, then Bilbo needed to see it with his own eyes. He slipped away from the game and trotted off after Balin. About halfway up the winding path that led from the mess to Thorin's pavilion, he slipped in a shadowy corner and put on the Ring. As eager as he was to see Thorin alive and awake, he had no intentions of hastening his own exile, and he was well-aware that as soon as Balin told Thorin what had been going on while he was unconscious, his welcome in the encampment might come to an awkward end. Even if Thorin didn't banish him, Bilbo was quite happy to do as Dwalin had suggested, and leave the king-wrangling to someone better qualified.

So he crept quietly to the pavilion and watched the silhouettes moving inside, casting shadows against the sturdy fabric. He arrived just in time to hear Thorin say, hollowly, "No. I don't believe it."

Bilbo was a hobbit, and he eavesdropped without difficulty. As Balin talked, the stunned disbelief in Thorin's voice gave way to resignation, and then to rage, and Bilbo listened to it all with the same morbid fascination that compelled him to look over cliffs and stare at corpses.

He listened while Balin told Thorin all about Dale and the Council, and he listened as Thorin lost his temper and started to shout. At last, Thorin dismissed Balin with strict orders to keep quiet.

"I want to be alone," the king said, hoarse and drained. Balin obediently left. Bilbo watched him go, then slipped off the Ring and walked shakily away, heading in the opposite direction.

There was no question of returning to the pavilion that night, or sleeping by Thorin's side as he usually did. And he couldn't bear to return to the game of Tig, though he could hear the shouts and cheering from halfway across the encampment. He wasn't in the mood for silliness anymore. Besides, the other dwarves might ask him why he looked so shaken and pale, and then he would need to scramble for a suitable lie. Instead, he wandered the encampment for what felt like hours; at last, tired and shivering and thoroughly wretched, Bilbo headed to Fíli and Kíli's tent.

Fíli took one look at Bilbo and ushered him inside. "I'm glad about Thorin," he said without prompting. "Balin was here just a few minutes ago, trying to coax me up to see him." He looked down at Kíli's pale face. His eyes were sunken, and his cheekbones sharp and gaunt. "But he can come visit when he's better, if he wants to see us. I'm not leaving."

Bilbo stole one of Fíli's blankets and buried himself in it, tucking his toes into the soft wool. Fíli pressed a mug of hot tea into his hands.

"How did you get this?" Bilbo asked, after he'd taken a sip. "It's lovely."

"Bombur sent it up from the mess. He was worried, and he knows that you stop by most evenings. He said you vanished in the middle of their final round of—Tig? Tog?"

"Tig," Bilbo said, letting the hot tea burn his tongue. "It's a silly game that hobbit children play. I taught it to Bofur as a lark, and he showed everyone else, and now I think we're well on our way to an official tournament."

"You should put in on the agenda for tomorrow's meeting."

"Right between _survive the winter_ and _rebuild your ruined homeland_?"

"Why not?" Fíli shrugged. "Even old campaigners need an excuse to laugh, and the young ones just want to be entertained. That's what Mama always says. Kíli and I were the best at it."

Bilbo almost smiled. "I can certainly believe that."

"Mama wanted us to be princes, not exiles. So we spent a lot of time playing nice and charming people. Especially after we settled in the Blue Mountains, because Uncle isn't any good with that kind of thing. Kíli was always better at making people laugh; he didn't get embarrassed like I did. But I was best at persuading."

There was a rustle of fabric and the sound of heavy footsteps. They both turned to see Dwalin stepped inside the tent.

"Course you were," he said. "After looking after a demon like Kíli, there wasn't a soul in Ered Luin you couldn't coax into doing your will." He nodded at Bilbo. "Mind if I interrupt?"

"Of course not," Fíli said, scooting over a few inches to give Dwalin room on his cot.

Dwalin took the proffered seat with a grunt of thanks. "What have you two been conspiring about, then?"

Bilbo hesitated. Surely there would be no harm in telling Dwalin about Thorin? Balin would tell him soon enough, if he hadn't already. But Thorin had been very clear that no one else was to know—

Before Bilbo could make up his mind, Dwalin shook his head and said "Oh, don't bother. We both know Thorin's awake, and we both know you've been eavesdropping with that fancy ring of yours. How much did you hear?"

Bilbo shifted guiltily. "I might have followed Balin, and—well. Overheard some bits and pieces, as it were."

"Figured as much. Don't fret over it, if you can help it. He'll come around."

"Will he?" Bilbo asked, thinking of the way Thorin had raged and shouted himself hoarse, and snapped every time Bard was so much as mentioned.

"Course he will. I promised I'd look after the king-wrangling, did I?"

"So you did. I—well, thank you. For helping me."

Dwalin shrugged. "I'm not doing it for you."

"Well.  Thank you anyway. Would you like some tea?"

"Nah.  I've got to round up my brother. We've some things to talk about, he's probably got a lecture all ready for me. Thinks I'm still a lad, I suppose. Brothers are like that." Dwalin clapped Fíli on the shoulder and got to his feet. "Thorin was sleeping when I left. You could go back to the pavilion, if you like."

"I'd rather not push my luck," Bilbo demurred.

Dwalin took his leave.  It was hard for Bilbo to share his blithe confidence, but who would know Thorin better than his oldest friend? If Dwalin said that Thorin's temper was only a passing thing, then Bilbo would trust that it was so. 

A gust of cold wind tugged at the canvas. Fíli settled himself beside Kíli, as if to help ward off the cold. Bilbo wordlessly gave him back the blanket, and Fíli accepted it with a wan smile.

Bilbo shivered and took another sip from his mug. He had missed his tea more than anything in the Shire, except perhaps for his feather bed and his books. Most of the siege supplies from Dain's armies had been lost in the battle, when the goblins broke the lines and got into the baggage train, but Bilbo could have wept for joy when Dain said that there was still some tea left among the salvage.

"There was a miner in Ered Luin," Fíli said, suddenly. He hadn't spoken since Dwalin left. "There was a cave-in. He got trapped in a collapsed mine shaft. It was a tricky thing, digging him out without risking a hundred tons of rock falling down on his head. The rescuers broke through almost a month later, expected to find him long since dead."

"And?" Bilbo prompted.

"He survived. Nothing to eat for twenty five days and hardly anything to drink, stuck in the dark with no one for company. He never mined again. Couldn't even live underground anymore. But he survived.  Aulë made us strong to endure, that's what Thorin always said. That we could endure anything, if only we were stubborn enough. Brave enough." Fíli kicked hard at the frozen ground. "I hate this. I'm so sick of being scared."

"I think I understand," Bilbo said. He remembered all too clearly the poisonous terror of his days in the Elvenking's palace, the silent hysteria of creeping through the stone halls and stealing scant hours of sleep in dark, cramped corners. It had only taken a few hours before he was bored to tears by his own racing heart and clammy hands. "At least a little."

Fíli carried on as if Bilbo hadn't spoken. "I'm bored. That's shameful to say, but it's true. I'm bored stiff. I wake up in the dark and I check to see if my brother's died during the night, and then I sit at his side all day long. I'm cold and hungry and tired all the time. Sometime after the watch cries midnight, I sleep. A few hours later I wake up and check again to see if my brother's dead.  Is that any way to live?"

The bitterness in his voice was painful to hear. Not for the first time, Bilbo wondered how much of Fíli would survive if Kíli died. So much of their good was bound up in each other.

"I could bring you food more often," Bilbo said, tentatively. "If you're hungry. I didn't realize."

Fíli shook his head. "Kíli hasn't eaten in more than a week. What gives me the right to—" he cut himself off. "No. There's no point in talking about it."

Bilbo stared. "Would you mind if I stayed the night?" he said at last, voice a little unsteady. "Only I'd rather not go back to the pavilion just yet, and I don't have anywhere else to sleep."

Fíli tried to smile. It didn't suit him. "As you like. All those meals you've brought us must be worth one night's lodging, at least. And I owe you double for the company this afternoon. It was nice, having everyone around again."

Soon after, Bilbo was curled up on the hard ground, exhausted, but too unsettled to sleep. Instead, he lay awake and listened to the sound of Fíli's breathing. His thoughts drifted. In all the long days since the battle, he realized, Fíli never wept. He never shouted. And, it would seem, he hardly ever ate.

Bilbo thought next of Thorin, as short-tempered and grim as ever. His complaints about Bilbo's silliness and stupidity reminded him of _more like a grocer than a burglar_ ; it seemed that after all they had been through together, they had come full circle to those miserable first days of the quest.  The thought stung, but it was hard to be angry when he remembered Thorin sitting in the pavilion, weak and worn down after a simple conversation.

Bilbo had counted on Thorin to be strong, to give a few sharp orders and set everything right. But it occurred to him now that Thorin had been a soldier for far longer than he'd been a prince.  Perhaps he was too used to war to give it up so easily.

Hours later, Bilbo drifted off to sleep at last, but his dreams were uneasy.


	8. Not So Easily Broken, Part 1

By dawn, rumors of Thorin's awakening were flying across the encampment. But the king never so much as stuck his nose out into the open, and for all Dwalin's assurances, he never once asked to see Bilbo, either.

In fact, as far as Bilbo could tell, he didn't do much of anything. He hadn't even ordered Bilbo's awkward little Council to halt their daily meetings. Bilbo had half-hoped that he would—he was dreading a repeat of yesterday's fiasco—but to no avail.  Which meant that less than a day after Thorin opened his eyes, Bilbo was in Fili and Kili's tent once again, trying to fill Thorin's impossibly large boots. This time, he had the added burden of keeping Thorin's recovery a secret from eight of the twelve dwarves. Balin and Dwalin knew, of course, and so did Fili. Kili was in no condition to care. But Thorin was still insisting on keeping his recovery quiet from everyone else, an edict that Balin was enforcing with stern looks and conveniently-timed coughing fits. It was a dreadfully uncomfortable affair.

For all the time that Bilbo had known him, Thorin had been dedicated to his quest to the point of obsession. His apathy, following so hard on the heels of his victory, was unnerving. It had crossed Bilbo's mind once or twice that Thorin might be ashamed of his injuries. But that was a ridiculous thought. No one thought less of Ori for his limp, or mocked Bilbo for his headaches. And anyone who claimed that Dwalin was less of a warrior for being wounded in battle would walk away (supposing he _could_ still walk) with conclusive evidence to the contrary.

Well, there was no point in fussing about it. Until Thorin ordered him to do otherwise, Bilbo was going to carry on precisely as before. So instead of sleeping or raiding the mess hall for elevensies or enjoying the wintery morning sunshine, he was stuck he was jostling for space in a crowded tent, surrounded by twelve dwarves and arguing over gold for the second day in a row. There was no room for a table, so they were all sitting on the ground, companionably squished together.

"—and certainly nothing of any sentimental value," Bilbo was saying from his place between Bofur and Dwalin. "Just plain old ordinary gold, dull as ditchwater, if you please."

Nori made a face. "I've got plenty of words for a heaping pile of gold, but dull ain't one of them."

"Yes, well, it can shine like the moon and stars, just so long as it's not a commemorative mithril chalice or a cultural artifact or a family heirloom. The last thing I want is to give Bard yet another irreplaceable dwarven treasure. The poor man doesn't need any more enemies." He did, however, need money. The first of the refugees from Laketown were arriving even as the Council met. Bard had no place to put them, and he could feed them only because the mess hall doled out meals impartially to the whole camp. There was a murmuring of discontent about that, and Bilbo knew it would only get worse as supplies ran short.

Dain hadn't bowed—yet—to his lords' indignant complaints that their salvaged foodstuffs, brought by the army of the Iron Hills to break the siege of Erebor, should be kept for the dwarves alone. But it was only a matter of time. Then Bard would come for his one fourteenth with one hand outstretched and the other unobtrusively wrapped around his sword hilt.

"What about jewels?" Balin asked. "We have thousands of uncut diamonds, provided that the dragon didn't pick through the treasure hall in search of cloth for his waistcoat."

"Unlike Smaug, Bard's going to spend it, not wear it," Bilbo said. "And he'll be spending most of it on dwarven goods and dwarven labor, I should think. A fair share will probably end up right back in Erebor's coffers."

There was a general rumble of satisfaction at that. "Maybe we should just keep Bard's share and give him a line of credit," Bofur suggested. "Save the labor of hauling it all up from the treasury only to haul it back down again."

Dwalin took a long swig from the huge mug that sat on the table in front of him. "There's a question," he said, wiping foam from his beard. "One fourteenth of Erebor's gold will make a tolerable mountain in its own right. Where's Bard planning on stashing it?"

"No way to keep it safe once it's outside Erebor," Nori said. "Not such a pile of loot as we're talking about."

Oín scowled. "Safe from who? I thought you'd traded in pickpocketing for brewing bad ale."

Nori opened his mouth, a sharp retort on his tongue, but his little brother, sitting close beside him, nudged him hard in the ribs.

"Remember Bilbo's rule," Ori whispered. The first item on Bilbo's list, the one that Balin had thought so ridiculous, read: _Only one person can be angry at a meeting at any given moment. If you're the second, please be quiet or go outside and find something to hit._

Nori sighed gustily and settled for giving Oín a dirty look.

"That's not a bad point, Nori," Bilbo said, trying to hide his giddiness at Ori's words and their effect. Judging by the expression on Balin's face, he hadn't succeeded. "I'll talk to Bard about it and see if he has any suggestions. In the meantime, shouldn't we at least make a start on figuring up exactly how much we owe him?"

"It's a shame about the records," Ori said. "And the library. At least some of the histories survived."

Dwalin drained his mug. "Histories be damned, I'd rather have the account books. Thrór was a cagey bastard, and it only got worse the older he got. I doubt even his old Council had any idea how wealthy we were."

Ori shrunk back into himself at the force of Dwalin's voice. Bilbo frowned repressively at the tattooed warrior and cleared his throat. Dwalin seemed oblivious to the effect he had on the youngest and shyest member of the Council, but Ori was quiet enough at meetings without Dwalin cutting him down whenever he spoke.

"We've less than half an hour before supper," Balin interrupted. "Have we actually gotten anything done today?"

There was a long pause. Ori, still red with embarrassment, glanced at his ink-splattered notes. Perhaps he thought the meeting minutes were privy to some revelation that no one else had noticed.

Bilbo couldn't blame Balin for his frustration. Trying to do Thorin's will had proven a thankless task for Balin, particularly—as Bilbo freely admitted—when there was a hobbit running around underfoot, making deals with the king's enemies and holding vaguely subversive councils and generally making a nuisance of himself.

"We're not very good at this, are we?" Bombur said, sounding mournful. "And the other cooks have ruined the afternoon's soup, like as not. I do more good in the kitchen than in a council."

"Nonsense," said Bilbo. "We're managing all right, aren't we?"

Bofur grinned. "Don't fret, brother. We'll figure it out as we go along, and soon you'll be as keen a politician as ever haggled over nothing. Unless Thorin kills us all first. Then we won't have to figure out anything except our wills and last words."

"Don't be ridiculous," Bilbo said. "Thorin's not going to kill anyone. Not even me, though I expect he's tempted. Er. He will be tempted, that is. Once he wakes up. Whenever that might be."

Balin gave him another look, this one sharper and more severe. Bilbo cast around for something to distract attention, but before he could do more than stammer and look uncomfortable, someone unexpected spoke up.

"We've got a visitor," Fili said. He was sitting beside Kili, just as he always was, and the other dwarves had all crowded to the other side of the tent, to give the two of them space. "Outside. It's an elf." His voice was quiet, but it was the first time he'd spoken all day, and everyone turned to look.

Bilbo frowned. "Not Thranduil, surely."

"No. One of his sons, I think. He's got a human child with him."

"Oh. I'll see what they want," Bilbo said reluctantly. The last thing he needed was more trouble. He edged his way through the crowd of seated dwarves, trying hard not to kick anyone or tread on any fingers as he pushed by. "You lot, carry on without me. We've still got to figure out when we're going to move into Erebor. I'm sick and tired of spending nights out in the cold." He wiggled between Nori and Ori and slipped out of the tent.

And stopped in his tracks. And stared.

The sun was watery, but it shone stubbornly in the cold blue sky. Specks of dust and dirt drifted through the air, glowing like floating gold. Morning frost still blanketed the ground in the untrodden shade; thin sheets of ice turned muddy footprints and potholes filled dirty water into delicate plates of white and silver. Legolas was standing in the muck, blue eyed and pale, only a shade or two warmer than the ice. When he saw Bilbo, he smiled. He looked just as lovely and unreal as ever, but the effect was somewhat ruined by the skinny human child that was clinging to his side.

It was probably a girl, but at that age it was hard to tell, and her hair had been sheared off, exposing the ugly burns that spread across her face. Her clothes were filthy, and her eyes swollen and red. She was the first of the Laketown survivors that Bilbo had seen.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," Legolas said, oblivious to Bilbo's silent dismay. "But the child is asking to speak to one of your dwarves. The one with the red hair and the bushy beard, she says."

"Glóin?" Bilbo said, blankly. "I don't—why?" It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if the child was all right, but he stopped himself just in time. Of all the foolish questions! Of course she wasn't all right.

The girl tugged at Legolas' sleeve, and he picked her up without a second thought, though she was covered in dirt and grime. She wrapped her arms around his neck and hid her face in the collar of his tunic. Legolas said something to her in his strange, lilting language, holding her with the practiced ease of someone used to looking after children.

He looked up again, and sighed. "She won't say, but perhaps they met in Laketown. She has no family. Her mother and brother died when the town burned, and she doesn't know her father. I'm told that that she's a bastard." He pronounced the word carefully, with faint puzzlement, as if bastardy was a new, baffling concept for him.

"Er, right," Bilbo said. "Glóin! Someone's asking for you."

There was a chorus of grumbling and a few halfhearted curses as Glóin shoved his way through the crowded tent.

"What's so damned important—oh." Glóin's voice turned surly when he caught sight of Legolas. "If you've come to apologize, elf, you can save your breath."

There had been an incident in Mirkwood, Bilbo knew, though he didn't remember the details. Something about the locket that Glóin had kept throughout the journey, the one with the little paintings of his wife and young son. But then Glóin noticed the girl, and he stood and stared at her, brow wrinkled in momentary confusion. She had lifted her head up at the sound of his voice, and their eyes met. "Oh," he said again. "Little Elsie? That you?"

She nodded, but still clung tight to Legolas. "I wanted to thank you," she said. Her voice was soft and scratchy. "For being so nice to me and my brother. You hadn't any cause to be. Most folk would've broke my fingers, or cried thief and got us sent before Master."

Glóin cleared his throat once, then twice. "You weren't no trouble," he said, gruffly. "Not one bit. A fellow ought to be pickpocketed now and then. It keeps him humble."

The girl smiled a little at that, and Legolas set her back down.

Glóin looked at her with more worry than Bilbo had thought the hardened old warrior capable of showing. "Do you—do you and your brother have a place to stay?" he asked. "Food, shelter? Someone to look out for you?"

"My brother drowned." Her voice was matter-of-fact. "Master came up with the townsfolk, though. I guess he'll see to us."

She fell silent, looking down and scuffing her bare feet against the frozen dirt.

"They've no shelter," Legolas put in. "And only what provisions they could salvage from Esgaroth. They cannot live on Dain's charity for long. My father has ordered that we supply Bard with our own stores, but it will be a lean winter regardless."

"For you as well as them," Bilbo pointed out.

Legolas shrugged his shoulders, an almost imperceptible movement. "So be it. We are not unused to hardship, and we've supplies enough to share—as you might remember, Mister Baggins. You made yourself very welcome in our halls."

"Yes, well," Bilbo said. "I am a burglar, you know."

"So I've heard."

Elsie was edging closer to Glóin. She was almost as tall he was, though he would have made four of her by weight.

"As I recollect it, your Master's no particular prize," Glóin said to her. "Leastwise not when it comes to looking after the likes of you. What about Bard? Maybe he'll take you on."

"Oh, he's a right proper lord now. Besides, he's got his own girls to look after. But it don't matter. I didn't come here to beg, sir, honest. I just wanted to say thanks."

"Seems to me it does matter, lass." Glóin sounded almost fatherly. "You and your folk need good sturdy lodging, and the sooner the better. But don't you worry none. I'll see to it."

"You will?" Bilbo and the girl chorused. It was hard to say which one of them was more startled. Even Glóin looked a little disconcerted, as if he couldn't quite believe what he'd just said. Only Legolas looked unsurprised.

"I—well, of course I will," Glóin said, rallying. "I'm a lord now, aren't I? Got all sorts of rights and privileges, and I'll use them as I like. You go with the princeling.  I'll take care of things here."

He strode back into the tent, and Bilbo followed at his heels, baffled and curious at the same time. The dwarves, to their credit, were actually having a civil discussion about how to make the mountain habitable again. Bilbo wasn't the only one who was sick of living in a cold, dirty shantytown.

"You lot!" Glóin said, interrupting a debate about the structural integrity of the entrance hall. "Stop yammering and listen."

Everyone obediently stopped yammering, and listened. Bilbo wondered enviously how he could learn to command that much attention on the power of his voice.

"There's a child standing not ten paces away from you that's got no kin and no shelter," Glóin said, "on account of a dragon burning her town to a soggy heap of ashes. She's barefoot and starving and cold, and there's hundreds of folk just like her. Now, it occurs to me that there's just shy of two hundred sturdy dwarves in this camp who've spent the last fortnight dicing and drinking. Getting put to honest work might do them some good. Anyone see where I'm going with this?"

No one spoke, but they did trade uncomfortable looks.

Glóin sighed. "Dale, lads. I want us to rebuild Dale for Bard and his people."

"Oh—but we don't like Bard," Ori blurted out. "Do we?"

"Thorin certainly doesn't," Balin reminded them, as if any of them could forget it. "And besides, the soldiers aren't ours to command. They're sworn to Dain and his lords, not to Thorin." He looked sternly at Bilbo, but Bilbo held his hands up defensively. For once, he wasn't the one making disagreeable suggestions.

"So we don't command them," Glóin said. "We offer them wages and let them work or not as they like. Take it out of Bard's fourteenth, if you want. Or take it out of mine."

Dwalin grunted his approval. "Why not?" he said, ignoring his brother's sharp protest. "It'll keep the lads busy. Set half of them to working on Erebor and half on Dale. Bard's soldiers can help, and so can the townsfolk. We're to be neighbors; we might as well get used to the notion."

"I'm good for it," Bofur said. Never the most sensitive of dwarves, he didn't notice the sudden tension that had settled over the group, radiating outward from Balin and Dwalin. "Bard's soldiers played Tig with us, remember? Seems they're not so bad as all that, at least when they're not trying to starve us out of the mountain."

It took a long time for Glóin to get the rest of the dwarves on his side, but there was an edge to his determination that was hard to deny; he had never been shy about making his opinions known, and this was more than his usual brashness. Something about that little girl had bothered him. Glóin was the only one among the dwarves with a family of his own, Bilbo knew; his wife and son were waiting for him back in the Blue Mountains, and surely he missed them dreadfully. Was it his fatherly instincts that rebelled at the thought of leaving any children, human or not, out in the cold?

Bilbo hoped so.

* * *

For Bard, it had been a long, miserable day.  The first of the refugees had arrived in the encampment in the early hours of morning. Bard had been on his feet ever since, struggling to find food and shelter for hundreds of tired, hungry people, many of them injured. It was thankless work. He knew too many of the women whose husbands had marched off with him to war, and it was his duty to grieve with the families of the dead. He held the children while they cried and promised stone-faced widows that their men had died well. Even when it wasn't true, and even when he didn't know. Even though it made no difference.

The soldiers had died, and the town had burned. What else was there to say? "He was a good man" meant but little to the pregnant girl, haggard and pale, who snapped back "He's a dead man now, so what does it matter?"

Bard was sick of it all by suppertime, and at dusk he gave in, desperate for a moment or two alone. There was only so much suffering he could take to heart.

His ragged tent, so lonely and uncluttered before, was now filled with what what remained of his family's worldly goods. Tilda had appeared around midday, ushered towards Bard by one of their old neighbors. Bard had taken one look at her, sick and shivering, and sent her away with strict orders to eat and rest. Sigrid and Bain, haggard but whole, had both insisted on helping their father with his work.  Now, as he returned at the end of the day, it was no surprise to see Tilda curled up in one corner, huddled under his coat.

What was surprising was the second girl—most definitely not one of Bard's relatives, unless one of his uncles had been fooling around where he shouldn't—drowsing beside her.

Bard moved almost quietly as an elf, in the general way of things, but the strange girl's eyes snapped open when he took a step toward her; she scrambled to her feet and stood braced for a blow, cringing a little.

Bard stepped back, slowly, his hands half-lifted. "Easy, child. I'm not angry. But I do want to know what you're doing here."

"The prince said I could stay," she said. "He said you wouldn't mind."

Bard sighed. He would have been more irritated by Legolas' habit of taking in strays if he didn't have the sneaking suspicion that he was one of them. "What's your name, then?"

"Elsie."

"Elsie. Right. Why don't you—wait." His eyes narrowed. He'd been distracted by the burns and the ragged hair, but there was something familiar about that pugnacious little nose, and the bright brown eyes, and those spindly limbs—

"I know you," he said. "You stole my money, didn't you? Last winter at market, your brother was the cutpurse and you were the distraction."

"That's right," she said, defiantly. "And we were good at it. Nobody better. Bet you didn't even notice we copped your coin 'til we was gone."

Bard had to give her that. "If you're planning on thieving from me again, you'll be disappointed. There's naught to steal." He spared a moment to be grateful that the Arkenstone was safe with Thorin. Keeping the thing would have been uncomfortable, once the dwarves of the Iron Hills got word of it, but losing it would probably have gotten him killed.

She said nothing.

He sighed again, raking a hand through his hair. He just wanted to sleep. Was that too much to ask? "Well, I guess it doesn't matter," he said aloud. "If Legolas said you could stay, then you can stay. You know my girls?  And Bain?"

"A little."

"Good enough. I'll just—leave you to your rest, then."

He turned to leave, had an uncomfortable thought, and turned back to grab up his sword, Legolas' knives, and both of their bows. Juggling weaponry and wondering where, exactly, he was going to go, Bard fled his tent.

The dragon killer, forced into retreat by a pint-sized cutpurse. For lack of any better excuse, he decided to blame Legolas.

Fortunately, elves were considered a curiosity even among the folk of Laketown, who had been trading with them for years. Bard found one of his old friends among the guard and pulled him aside. "Gav, any chance you've seen the prince?"

Gaven, who had been laboring over the inglorious job of latrine digging, stuck his shovel into the frozen ground and leaned against it. "Last I saw he was heading up mountainside," he said, jerking his head to indicate the dwarven side of the encampment, on the sloping ground that rose up above them. "But he said he might go down to Dale later. You could try the ruins?"

It was a long walk, but Bard was glad for the chance to escape the oppressive misery that lingered over the camp. He thanked Gav and went on his way.

He whistled idly as he walked: not out of happiness, but rather the same restless spirit that so had so often seized him in the long wake of the battle. The sun was sinking low on the horizon, casting streaks of fading light on the rocky ground. The mountains was framed in a halo of pink and orange clouds, lit from behind and glowing like some careless spirit had set the sky on fire.

Bard wondered if Legolas would teach him the names of the Valar. Surely an elf would know. It had never mattered when he was a guardsman, but a lord ought to know such things.

There was no road to Dale, but the ruins still stood crooked and crumbling in the graying light. He walked briskly, lungs aching as he breathed deep of the harsh northern air. All his life, ever since he was a little boy, he had looked over the water towards the mountain, and wondered what it would be like to stand among the rocky foothills, or to see the ancient skeleton of Dale sketched out in the brown tufted grass, tumbledown stones buried under a century of dirt and ash.  Now he was here, carrying more weapons than he knew what to do with, kicking at pebbles and hiding from his duties for a few stolen moments. Eventually he caught sight of Legolas, kneeling by a cairn on the edges of the old city. He was resettling the stones one by one. He heard Bard's footsteps, of course, but he didn't look up until Bard was kneeling beside him.

"This was a tomb once," he said. "For a young lord who took ill and died."

"You knew him?"

Legolas nodded. With slim, steady hands, he tugged a stone out of the dirt and set it atop the growing pile. "He was Girion's brother. The three of us used to hunt under the boughs of the Greenwood."

Bard looked at the pile of plain stones with new eyes. This was the grave of one of Bard's own kin, distant and unremembered as he had been. He brushed his fingers against the hard ground, tracing the letters of his own name but making no mark. "I didn't know Girion had a brother," he said. "I don't know much about him at all, when it comes to it."

Legolas sat back on his heels, surveying his work. "Someday I'll tell you stories about him."

"Will they be true?"

"All my stories are true," Legolas said. "I thought you had learned that."

"Stars and kings and cursed jewels? I wasn't born yesterday, prince. Likely enough you have a story to explain the unexpected guest I found in my tent this evening, too."

"Oh, the child stayed?" He sounded surprised. "I thought she'd been gone the moment I turned my back. But she needed a safe place to sleep, Bard. She's not well-liked amongst her townsmen."

Bard raised his eyebrows. "I wonder why."

"And I wonder at the cruelty of townsfolk who would so ill-treat their own children."

Bard said nothing.  There was too much truth in the words for comfort.  "It won't be like that in Dale," he said. "It will be a good city. An honorable city." He rubbed his hands against his arms, wishing vainly for his coat.  "If I get it built before we all freeze to death, that is."

Legolas glanced over at him. "If," he agreed. "That stone, the one by your hand—may I have it?"

Bard dug it out of the dirt and handed it to him, but he wasn't fooled by the distraction. It was a mark of how much time he'd spent with Legolas that Bard was starting to recognize his smiles, few and faint as they were.  "You know something that I don't," he accused. "More than usual, I mean."

"Do I?" Legolas said. He didn't meet Bard's eyes, but his lips twitched with the effort of hiding the telltale expression. He must have been dreadfully bored with his kin in Mirkwood, Bard thought, if he took such delight in tormenting a simple village guardsman.

"You're a brat," Bard said. He slumped down with a small, pained groan, letting himself collapse back onto the ground. He was too tired to care about propriety. "Gods, but I hurt. If an honest day's work ruins me so, I'll be an old man by midwinter, griping about my aches and pains. And If I'd known I had this to look forward to, I would've gone out to the docks and asked Smaug snap me up as he flew by."

"You would make but a poor meal," said Legolas.  "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"You've worked just as hard as I have. Give me a moment and get angry about that. Do elves ever get tired?"

"Of course we do. We just don't need rest as mortals do."

"I wish I'd been born an elf," Bard muttered, and closed his eyes.  But he couldn't sleep, not yet. He was lying in the midst of an abandoned ruin, for one. For another, there was still work for him to do. The first of the promised supplies from Mirkwood would be arriving in a day or two, including timber and tools to build proper winter shelters. But once he had them, he would have to figure out what to do with them. There weren't any architects or surveyors among the men of Laketown—at least, not anymore. There were builders, but only the rough common sort like Bard himself, who had split his childhood summers among the guard and the construction gangs that had so carefully built up their homes on the lake, year after year.

"We could go back to King Thranduil's tent," Legolas offered, as he put the last stone in place. He brushed his hands off and looked down at the rebuild cairn with an air of quiet satisfaction. "He doesn't use it, since he's staying with Thorin. And I've been imposing on your hospitality for far too long as it is. Thank you for bringing my weapons."

Bard knew he should get up, but he couldn't bring himself to move. "Couldn't see leaving your little cutpurse alone with them."  He wondered, idly, why Legolas never called Thranduil _father._ Perhaps it was an Elvish custom.

Legolas shook his head.  "You're too tired to be any good to anyone, Bard. Come back with me and get some rest. I'll wake you in the morning, if you'd like."

"No need. The little ones will wake us all before dawn, with their screaming and crying. There aren't enough women to look after them, and everyone's miserable and short tempered besides. Share that good news you've been so smug about, why don't you? I could use something to smile about."

"I don't know what you're talking about.  But I will tell you this. Thorin Oakenshield is awake."

Bard sat up so fast that his head ached in sudden protest. "I thought it was just rumor," he said. "You're certain? He'll live?"

"The king told me this morning," Legolas said. "It's something of a secret, yet."

"Not for long." Bard had grown up among the gossips of Laketown, and he knew that soldiers were as good as old maids when it came to rumors and speculation. "Damn. I was getting used to having Bilbo around to make everything so agreeable for us. But Thorin's no friend of mine, and neither are his cousin's lords. I doubt even the stubbornest hobbit will have much account with folk like that."

"Perhaps not," Legolas said, holding out a hand and helping Bard to his feet. "But according to my father, Bilbo Baggins is the match of any soul living for sheer contrariness. And even dwarves know how to be decent, in the end."

* * *

Thranduil had made it brutally clear that Thorin was in no condition to be doing anything. His body was weak from almost ten days of inactivity, and from months of short rations, hard travel, and frequent combat before that. His ribcage was a half-healed wreck, and he could easily take a turn for the worse if he tried to force his recovery. Thranduil said this often, at every opportunity, until at last Thorin lost his temper and roared that if Thranduil said another word about his weakness and frailty, Thorin would test the claim by throttling him.

A full day had passed since he'd first awakened, and Thorin was feeling more like himself every moment. When Thranduil left to fetch his dinner—Bilbo was busy with his own work, according to Thranduil, who complained often about the loss of his favorite errand-boy—Thorin hauled himself up and stumped outside, the fresh cold night air filling his lungs. The petty rebellion wasn't nearly as satisfying as finally escaping that damnable pavilion, which had started to feel more like a funeral shroud than a shelter.

Thranduil might be back at any moment, so Thorin walked as quickly as he could. He'd already decided that he would go to the mess hall. If he felt weak, his meals of water and weak broth were likely half of the reason, and if Thranduil wouldn't condescend to give him proper meals then he would go and get decent, hearty food cooked by his fellow dwarves.

The hall was easy to find. It was the bright center of the camp, a flurry of movement and conversation, sparks and smoke from a few cooking fires still drifting up from the makeshift chimneys, thought it was long after supper and most of the camp was abed.

Occasionally, Thorin passed one of his fellows. No one looked twice at him as he walked through the narrow, winding pathways that led between tents and makeshift shelters. As far as anyone knew he was just another tired, wounded dwarf, some haggard warrior too restless to sleep.

He ignored the trembling in his limbs and the dull ache that blossomed through his body with every breath. Instead, he listened to the muted, sleepy chatter around him, and exchanged nods with the soldiers that he passed, grateful for the moment that his long exile had left him unknown among his own people. His name was famous, but only the Company and a rare few of Dain's older subjects and lords would recognize his face.

It occurred to him that Thranduil might have been right, and that he should still be abed; he felt as fumbling and awkward as a gangling child. He ignored the traitorous thought and carried on, breathing heavier at every painful step. He was almost there.

And then, only a few steps from the inviting warmth of the mess hall, he lurched, cursed, and promptly tripped over his own two feet.

The world twisted around, the ground rushing up to meet him. Years of combat training saved his life once again: he threw out his hands in front of him and let his arms and palms take the worst of the impact. Bones grated in his chest, and a sudden, shattering pain drove all the air from his lungs. If he'd landed on his broken ribs, he thought, dazedly—

"Cor! You all right, lad?" Through the haze of pain, Thorin heard a gruff voice and the sound of booted footsteps. A rough hand settled on his shoulder and patted his back while struggled to breathe.

"Fine," he choked out. "I'm fine."

"Yeah, sure. You look it. Come on, up you get—anything broken?"

With the other dwarf's help, Thorin clambered back to his feet. "Nothing that wasn't already," he said stiffly. "My thanks."

The sting of humiliation faded a little when the dwarf grinned and waved the words away. He was one of Dain's soldiers, but Thorin didn't see anything to mark his family, or what lord he served under in battle. His face was battered and livid with bruises, and his noise badly broken. The weathered skin around his blackened eyes crinkled when he grinned.  He held one hand out to keep Thorin steady. "Where're you headed?"

"To the mess hall. I'm fine. I just need food and a moment to—to breathe."

But the dwarf was stubbornly deaf to his protests, and he walked Thorin along the last few yards of the path. Neither of them spoke, but Thorin nodded at the old dwarf as they parted ways, just in front of the mess. The soldier hummed as he walked back into the darkness. The moment he was safely out of sight Thorin collapsed against the rough wooden wall, shaking from the simple exertion. A fine king he made, unable to walk across his encampment unaided!

He composed himself, waiting until he could breathe more or less normally and had mastered his treacherous body once more. Then he stepped inside the door to the mess hall, which swung open on its crude hinges.

The hall itself was a wide, open space, the provisional stoves and cooking fires set along the far side. It was a chilly night, and a stiff gusting wind rattled boards and canvas across the camp, but inside the hall the air was quiet, and warm with the light of banked fires. The cooks were cleaning up the remains of supper. Tomorrow's bread was already baked and cooling, and huge cast iron pots of soup simmered down to meat and broth.

Still, it was not as much food as an outsider would have expected for so large an encampment. Animals were scarce in the Desolation, and most of the supplies brought to the mountain by Dain's army had been destroyed in the battle, when the warg-riders broke the dwarven lines and ravaged the baggage train. But the elves and dwarves had pooled what food remained, and the Laketown survivors had brought what winter stores they had been able to salvage from the dragonfire and cold rushing water.

For a moment, Thorin stood in the shadows, watching unnoticed as the cooks and assistants went about their work. He saw Bifur and his cousins in the crowd. It was good to see his old Company—now his Council, absurd as that was—alive and doing honest work, just as they had in Ered Luin.

Inevitably, though, Bifur turned around, caught sight of Thorin standing in the shadows by the door, and dropped an entire armful of dishes in his rush to send up a flurry of hand signs. " _Melhekh_ ," he said, in strangled Khuzdul. _Our king._

Bofur was the first to react to his cousin's proclamation; he turned, his eyes widening as he caught sight of Thorin. Immediately, he abandoned the stoves and rushed towards him, a cheer on his lips. Thorin braced himself for one of Bofur's crushing, impulsive hugs. But Bofur came to his senses, hesitated a scant distance from Thorin, and sketched a bow. Then he pulled him into a gentle embrace, hands fluttering over Thorin's shoulders as if he didn't know where to put them.

"Our king," he said, following Bifur's lead. He stepped back and bowed again. "Can't tell you how fine it is, seeing you up and about. Half of everybody gave you up, what with the elf king poisoning you and who knows what else. Some of Dain's boys had a bet about it, an awful rude gang, but we stopped that quick when we got word of it, never you fear, and—"

Thorin let the words wash over him, soaking them up like water after a drought. How had he ever believed that Bofur and his family were nothing more than impoverished miners? How had he dared to think that Bofur was but a tactless nuisance, too uncultured to respect his betters? Thorin remembered those unkind thoughts from their first days on the road, but it was as if he was peering in on the mind of a stranger.

Dear, brave, ridiculous Bofur, he thought now. Lord Bofur, for a seat on the Council meant a lordship, and lands to rule, and a title that his children would one day inherit. Sudden affection tugged at his heart, sharp and a little bit painful. Perhaps some good had come out of Bilbo's ineptitude after all.

The crowd of dwarves was split. Most of them he didn't recognize, and they hung back, uncertain what to do or say. He was a strange figure indeed—an uncrowned exile, Durin's heir returned from the dead. But more than half of his Company seemed to be here, and they had crowded around him.

Soon they were all chiming in with Bofur's stories, laughing and talking over one another.  When Thorin began to waver on his feet, the noise and commotion making his head ache and swim, a chair appeared; he was swept into it as if by magic. For a moment he was ashamed of his frailty, but his dwarves were looking at him with a mix of pride and disbelieving awe, as if he was a treasure worth protecting.

It was hard to remember that he was weak—that he was flawed, that he needed to be strict and relentless—when little Ori was staring up at him with something dangerously close to hero worship.

No sooner had he mentioned that he was hungry than Bombur hurried off to the stoves, half a dozen of his assistants trailing like ducklings in his wake. No weak broth or stale bread for the King under the Mountain; in short order, a gently steaming bowl had been set on the table in front of Thorin, rich with meat and herbs, and a loaf of bread still soft and warm from the ovens, alongside a mug of Nori's latest experimental brew.

He barely touched the mug before Oín snatched it away, muttering dire warnings about what happened to dwarves who tried to drown their kings with poisonous slop. Nori scowled and threw himself into a heated defense of his distillery, but he cast small sideways glances at Thorin the whole time, as the argument—a little exaggerated and silly, even for the Company—gathered steam for Thorin's benefit.

Thorin ate quietly.  In the pavilion, he had spent hours lying in wretched solitude, alone but for his own bleak thoughts and the sour, silent Elvenking. It was good to have friendly company again, and to see his dwarves home and safe at last. The dragon was dead, he reminded himself for the hundredth time. Erebor was his, and they were home. He would finally be able to protect his own.

That took him to thoughts of Fili and Kili—but no, no, he would not think of that.

He forced himself back to the warm, cheerful argument that was still raging about him.  Something of his bleak unhappiness must have shown on his face: the Company slowly quieted around him. The other dwarves had returned to their work at the stoves, or at least pretended to, and left the seven members of the Company sitting at one of the tables at the other end of the hall, arrayed around Thorin.

"We knew you were awake, of course," said Glóin, confidentially. "Dwalin and Balin didn't say anything, and neither did Dain, but the gossips were fluttering all last night, and by morning everyone was talking about it. Good news travels fast as ill."

"And Bilbo was all fussy and strange at Council this morning," said Bofur. "Fussier and stranger than usual, I mean."

Thorin looked up from his meal. "Oh, the Council," he said, a bit more sharply than he'd intended.

A rustling, uncomfortable quiet descended. Glóin coughed.

"Um," Ori said, tremulously. "We—um."

"Never mind that now," Thorin said, somewhat pacified by the uncomfortable looks being traded around him. It wasn't their fault that Bilbo had decided to meddle. And it wasn't as if there was anything to be done about it. Once a dwarf had been appointed to the Council, they couldn't be removed except by royal edict, and then only if they had committed treason or some other grievous offense. So Thorin had his Council, like it or not. They would simply have to make the best of it.

"Where is the rest of the Company?" he asked instead, leaning back in his seat.

"Dori helps out at the healer's tents," Ori offered.

"Aye, Oín too," Glóin said.

"Fili and Kili—well, I guess you know where they are," said Bofur, as indelicate as ever. "And Dwalin and Balin are off arguing, like as not. That's all they've been doing since last night. Over Bilbo and the Council and suchlike. Don't suppose you could knock some sense into them?"

That was interesting news. Dwalin almost never broke with his brother; he was one of the most steadfastly loyal dwarves that Thorin had ever met. And off the battlefield, Balin had always been mild-mannered to a fault. "Perhaps," Thorin said. "I'll speak to them, certainly. And yes. I know about my nephews."

"They're in one of the tents up on the slopes," said Bombur. "I bring them meals sometimes, when Bilbo can't manage it. I could show you up—if you'd like, I mean. It wouldn't be a trouble. Sire."

Thorin couldn't bring himself to refuse, though he wasn't sure how many more wounds his heart could bear. He pushed his chair back and forced himself to his feet. "Yes," he said. "You may take me to them. Thank you."

He wasn't thanking Bombur alone. He didn't have the words for his gratitude.  But Bofur grinned, and Ori blushed, and the rest chorused goodnights as Bombur led him out of the kitchens.

Bombur apparently felt obligated to make conversation. He chattered about trifles as they walked. Thorin forced himself to listen.  It was a distraction, if nothing else. This time, a few stares and murmurs followed them; Bombur was well known around the camp, and his obvious deference was unmistakable. But it was dark, and for the most part quiet, and no one approached them or caused any great stir.

With one exception.

No sooner had Bombur pointed out Fili and Kili's tent, lit from the inside by the warm glow of lamplight, than a very small, very familiar figured stepped outside, silhouetted by the dim light. He hadn't seen them, but Thorin and Bombur recognized him in the same instant.

Thorin cursed, softly and with feeling. The hobbit.  It seemed there was to be no avoiding him.

"Well, here we are," Bombur said, loudly.

Bilbo glanced over at the sound of his voice, and his jaw dropped. "Oh," he said, faintly. "Oh. Hello."

"I should get back to the soup," Bombur said as he sidled away. "Make sure they haven't—burned it." He made an expeditious retreat down the slopes, but if Thorin noticed, he gave no sign of it. His was staring at Bilbo, an impossible roil of emotions tangling in his stomach.

Bilbo walked up to meet him, his head held high and his hands tucked into the pockets of an absurdly large and ill-fitting coat. He was pale and wan, and the lines of his face were sharper than Thorin remembered, but he looked so familiar that Thorin had to repress a sudden, startled laugh. He had been imagining—well, he didn't know what he'd been imagining. The last time Thorin had seen the halfling he'd been a battered little soldier wearing mithril armor, blood drying in his hair, his cheeks damp with tears.

"You," Thorin said, but there words failed him. " _You_."

"Er, I'm afraid so," Bilbo said, stopping in his tracks. He was keeping just out of reach, Thorin realized. He looked resigned, not scared, like a dog that had grown accustomed to being kicked.

It was an unwelcome thought, and Thorin tried to ignore it without success. In the end, he only shook his head and sighed. "Go away, Mister Baggins. I'm too tired to be angry with you right now."

"I should say so!" Bilbo said, peering up at Thorin. "You look dreadful. You snuck out when Thranduil wasn't looking, didn't you?"

Thorin did not appreciate being told off like a wayward child. He especially did not appreciate the implication that he owed the Elvenking even the tiniest scrap of obedience or consideration, and he told Bilbo so in no uncertain terms.

"Yes, yes, that's well and good," Bilbo said once he was finished, in the same tone of voice he used when arguing with wizards and trolls and—for all Thorin knew—vengeful dragons named Smaug. "But if you catch cold and sicken and die because you were too stubborn to stay in bed when you ought, I will be extremely angry with you, Thorin Oakenshield. I hope you realize that."

The conversation was not going as Thorin had expected. In particular, he had imagined rather less scolding, and a good deal more righteous anger on his part. But why should he be surprised? Things never went as they should when Bilbo Baggins was around.  No one had ever confounded Thorin so often, or so thoroughly.

"Dwarves don't get colds," he said, stupidly.  "Oh, for the love of—leave. Now. I want to see my nephews. When I can speak to you without shouting and throwing things, I'll send for you."

Bilbo didn't budge an inch. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Yes," Thorin snapped.  "If you happen across Bolg, or Durin's Bane, or any other creature bent on the ruin of my kin, don't bid them settle at the gates of my kingdom."

"Bard's not a creature," Bilbo protested. "He's nice, really, once you get to—"

"If you say 'once I get to know him', I will not be held responsible for my actions."

Bilbo ducked his head, stuck his hands deeper in his pockets, and slouched off into the night, looking thoroughly frustrated and downtrodden. Thorin reminded himself that there was no reason to feel guilty about that, but even his thoughts suddenly lacked in conviction.  The prickling remorse only soured his temper more.  He hadn't come to trade petty words with the hobbit.

He took a ragged breath.  Before he could step inside the tent or make his presence known, though, Fili stuck his head out and said: "You can come in, you know. Unless you'd rather chase after Bilbo and shout at him some more."

Thorin obeyed.  "It's good to see you," he said, glancing around the modest, barren accommodations. Soon, he promised himself.  Soon his nephews would have a home that befitted their stations, suitable for princes of Durin's royal line.  His eyes drifted to Kili, lying motionless and battered on a rickety old cot. The bruises that mottled his face and neck were fading in sunbursts of green and yellow, and the most superficial of his wounds had scabbed over, but there was no ignoring the white cotton wrapped around the stump of his right arm, the limb hacked off just below the elbow. Thorin swallowed hard, and reached out to brush a few errant strands of hair away from the boy's closed eyes.

"He's getting better," Fili said. "No one believes me, but he is. Sometimes he reaches for my hand, or his eyes flicker a little. I think maybe tomorrow he'll wake up."

"What do the healers say?"

"They don't say anything to me anymore." Fili was unnervingly composed, his voice flat and even. "Or at least, most of them don't. The Elvenking visits sometimes."

Thorin couldn't decide whether he was angry at Thranduil for the presumption, or grateful that he had been willing to look after his enemy's children. "Kili's not one to give up without a fight," he said, putting a gentle hand on Fili's shoulder. "And he would be loath to leave you behind."

He'd meant the words to be a comfort. But Fili crumpled at them.

Whatever strength of will or composure had carried him thus far without tears or evident emotion, it had deserted him. He bit his lip hard enough to break the skin, but his eyes were already welling up. A jagged sob clawed its way out of his throat.

Thorin watched in shock and no little horror as Fili covered his face with his hands and slumped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He stood for a moment, frozen with indecision; he hadn't seen either of his nephews cry since they were children. They had always been so proud to be their uncle's heirs, and so determined to be strong for him. And only moments ago, Fili had seemed so unruffled. So hale and whole, compared to his lifeless brother.

Fili tried to compose himself, taking deep shuddering breaths and straightening his shoulders, but when he tried to speak he could only manage a breathless "Uncle, I'm sorry—" before his shoulders were shaking with repressed sobs.

Thorin knelt beside him, ignoring the pain the movement caused, and cradled him close. He couldn't bear to see the boy so wretchedly unhappy. Fili clung to him like a lost child. He said his brother's name over and over, soft and keening, like the cry of some broken bird. Thorin held him and said nothing.

Eventually, Fili buried his face in Thorin's shoulder, his grief spent. His golden hair fell unbound around his face. Thorin's hand caught on the tangles as he stroked it.

"Let me?" Thorin asked, and felt Fili nod in assent.

When Fili and Kili were children, running wild across foreign villages and sleeping in hovels, Thorin had often been the one to plait their hair and send them off to bed, so it was familiar work. He hummed a lullaby as he coaxed the knots out of Fili's hair and pulled it back into a simple braid. It was an old tune, an ancient lullaby of the children of Durin. It had soothed generations of his family to sleep.

"I know that song," Fili said, voice unsteady. "Mother used it sing it to us."

Thorin nodded. "And my grandmother to your mother and I, when we were children."

"And to Frerin?"

Thorin closed his eyes. His beloved golden brother, so bright and beautiful. So much like Fili in looks, and so like Kili in spirit—how Frerin would have loved his nephews, had he lived long enough to know them.

"Yes," he said aloud. "She sang to Frerin, too. Now, what have you done with your silver clasp?"

Fili shook his head. "Gone," he said. "I don't know where. Kili's, too."

It was nothing to weep over, but Thorin felt the tightness in his throat nevertheless. Fili and Kili's hair clasps had been old and battered, made of nothing but plain silver, but once upon a time they had belonged to the dowager queen. Thrór had given them to her when she was a tiny lass and he even younger, along with the promise that one day he would be a mighty king and she would be his wife.

Thorin had often heard the story of his grandparents' courtship, and he remembered how Dís had smiled, bright and beautiful, when she had found the clasps in her trousseau on her wedding day. "Look what Grandmother gave me," she had said, and held them up so they shone in the light. "Aren't they beautiful, brother? One day I'll have a daughter of my own, and give them to her, and tell her all the stories of our family."

Dís had brought the clasps with her into the wilds. And she might have wanted a daughter, but she would have traded anything to keep her sons alive, even the last of her grandmother's heirlooms. Silver was a petty treasure in the face of their exile: cold autumn nights, and hunger pangs that made tiny, toddling Fili curl up and cry. She pawned the clasps in a human village a few days before Kili was born.

Later that winter, Thorin sold his father's sword to buy them back, cursing the broker who had demanded more in coin than he could ever hope to pay. What wouldn't he have done, that winter, to see his sister's haggard face light up? It had been worth it to see her smile when she opened her present on midwinter's eve, and to watch baby Kili coo and bat at the silver with chubby fingers, babbling words that only Fili could understand. It had been worth it to see Fili standing on his tiptoes to peer over the edge of the bassinet, his eyes wide and his touch soft, as if he couldn't quite believe that his infant brother was real.

"It doesn't matter," Thorin said now, ignoring the aching chest that had nothing to do with his wounds. "Trinkets are easily lost on the battlefield. There. All done."

"Thank you," said Fili softly. But for his old clothes and his tearstained face, he looked almost respectable again.

"You're welcome, lad. Now, up you get." Thorin kissed Fili's brow and drew him up.

Fili staggered, but Thorin held steady until the boy was standing, quiet but whole. "You're too light," he said, startled. He realized that he could see the curve of Fili's collarbone, and even in the dim light his cheekbones stood out in sharp relief. "Have you been eating?"

Fili shrugged. "Not hungry."

Thorin's grip on Fili's shoulders tightened. "You must be strong for your brother, Fili. When was the last time you ate?"

"Bilbo brings something from the mess every morning. Sometimes I have that."

"Well, at least the hobbit's good for something. I'll see that you're brought a plate for dinner as well, and I want—"

"Two," Fili blurted.

"What?"

"Two plates. One for me and one for Kili."

Thorin nodded slowly. "As you wish. But none of your childish games, Fili. Promise me that you'll eat?"

A dull blush bloomed in Fili's cheeks, but he met his uncle's eyes and nodded. "Yes. I promise."

Thorin pulled him into another embrace. "That's my brave lad."

He hadn't been so affectionate with either of his nephews since Kili was a babe in arms, but that didn't matter. Thorin might have been weak and wavering, caught between his years in exile and the strange new life that was laid out before him, but he would be strong for Fili and Kili. That much he could do.

"I am so very proud of you," Thorin said, roughly. "My heir, my own—"

Fili didn't start crying again. He just wrapped his arms around Thorin and held tight.


	9. Not So Easily Broken, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: At very long last, we've reached the end of the first plot arc! A preview of what's coming in chapters ahead: winter in Erebor, Dale's growing elf collection (they just keep showing up), and the dubious morals of the Master of Laketown. Also Thorin falling in love with his hobbit, soldiers going missing on patrols, a sad Fili, and a very worried Gandalf.
> 
> Thank you, as ever, to all the amazing people who are taking the time to read this story, and even to review. I can't say enough how much I appreciate you all; you make this fandom awesome.

An outsider might have assumed that the encampment's resident wizard was staying aloof because he had no interest in politics, or because as one of the Wise he was above gossip and scandal, or because he didn't care for the lowly creatures that surrounded him now that his immediate work was done.

None of this was true.

Gandalf was enormously fond of the dwarves he had shepherded all the way from the Blue Mountains, and even fonder of their little tagalong hobbit. He respected Bard and Dain. And though he and Thranduil had their differences, they recognized in one another a certain kind of kindred spirit. Even among the elves, there were few still living in Arda who could claim to have known Doriath before its ruin.

Furthermore, Gandalf wasn't one for standing on ceremony. He had been perfectly content, in centuries past, to keep bartenders in business and trade gossip with kings and gardeners alike. The Prancing Pony had long been one of his favorites, but there was a pub in the fifth circle of Minas Tirith that served extraordinarily good ale, and a distilled drink that the proud owner called _whiskey_. (He claimed that it would put a fine set of whiskers on the face of even a beardless youth. Gandalf was inclined to believe him.)

So he would have been happy to sit with the Company, telling outlandish tales and drinking the dubious alcohol that Nori brewed in his distillery. His absence had nothing to do with disdain, or even his satisfaction with a job well done.

He was simply tired. Exhausted.

Even with Lady Galadriel's strength, and two of his fellow Istari besides, throwing down the Necromancer's fortress had been a grueling effort. The strength of that old citadel had been rooted deep in the ground, so tangled up in trees and stone and sickly air that the soul of the forest had been corrupted almost beyond redemption.

Like drawing poison from a wound, the Necromancer had made the healing almost as dangerous as the injury itself, and even Saruman had been wearied by the fight. It had almost killed Elrond—it had fallen to Lady Galadriel to save her son-in-law's life. And in the days after the battle, Gandalf found himself falling asleep whenever he sat down for a moment's rest, and losing his thoughts in the fog that had settled over his mind, like cobwebs over branches.

But he had grown stronger as the days passed, and such interesting things had been happening that curiosity overcame his weariness. Just that morning, he had seen gangs of dwarves going down to Dale, carrying pickaxes and shovels and joking amongst themselves. Loads of hewn timber and building supplies were coming up from Laketown, alongside hundreds of refugees. Rumors were flying that Thorin had awakened at last, and was about to lead the dwarves into the mountain, or perhaps that he was about to take up arms and drive Bard from the encampment, and punish the hobbit burglar for his impudence.  Gandalf might have been worried by rumors like that, but he had spoken with Thranduil often in the days since the battle.  He knew that the situation was not nearly so dire as the camp gossips were making out. Still, Gandalf would be glad of the chance to see Thorin for himself, and perhaps give him a stern lecture on the care and keeping of hobbits. 

It was early in the day when Gandalf roused himself for an amble around the rocky slopes, his staff in hand and Glamdring at his side; no one had forgotten that there were still dangers lurking to the north, Bolg not least among them. He made first for Thorin's pavilion, but the guards outside shook their head when he made to enter.

"You don't want to be interrupting them, Master Tharkûn," one of the said. "Not when they're shouting and throwing things and carrying on so."

From inside the pavilion, Gandalf heard a very familiar voice howl "You left us to starve in the wastelands, and yet you speak to me of honor? My grandfather is dead because of you. My father was tortured to death under the boughs of your accursed forest!"

"If we are to speak of suffering," a smooth voice snapped back, "then shall I ask you how your kin acquitted themselves at Dagorlad, when my royal father was slain on the field and my brothers torn to pieces about his corpse? We died by the thousands on those plains. No one stirred themselves to save us, not even the kings of men or the Noldorin lords. And let us not speak of Thingol and his Lady Melian, and the rape of Doriath after the dwarves murdered our king."

Gandalf heard something crash against the side of the pavilion. It sounded heavy and expensive.

"Perhaps you're right," Gandalf said to the dwarven guards, all of whom looked profoundly uncomfortable.  It was, he supposed, rather like listening to an argument through the keyhole of a door. In the vague distant way that he kept all of his memories of Valinor, he remembered lingering in Irmo's gardens and listening to Nienna and Námo while they debated with the rest of the Valar, sometimes caught up in bitter council for weeks at a time. 

Neither Thranduil nor Thorin would ever be known as the most patient and understanding of kings, and their tempers were much alike in all the worst ways. "It would be a shame to interrupt them, wouldn't it?" he said.  

One of the guards nodded fervently. Gandalf left in search of less quarrelsome company. Perhaps Bard would be willing to settle down for a chat.

But Bard was working down in Dale, and when Gandalf looked down at the ruined city from the edge of camp, he saw that there would be no time for idle conservation. Dwarves and men alike were hard at work moving supplies and digging foundations. Others were pouring over maps, measuring distances with lengths of heavy cord, and pounding stakes into the ground.

One of the tiny figures detached itself from the flurry of activity and waved. Gandalf, leaning against his staff, waved back.

It was Legolas, of course. Only an elf's keen eyes could see across such a distance. Gandalf waited, watching the surveying with no little interest, while he ran lightfooted across the rocky desolation and up the sloping ground to meet him. "I see you've been at work," he observed when Legolas drew to a halt beside him and made his greetings. "Does your father know?"

Legolas smiled at that. He was brighter and more breathless than Gandalf had ever seen him.  With his hair was pulled back, and a streak of dried mud on his cheek, he looked less like a Sindarin prince than one of Lenwë's sons, living wild along the banks of the Great River. Not for the first time, Gandalf wished that he had lived in Arda in such a merry time as that. What years those had been—long, long before Sauron crept back from Númenor and seduced even his enemies to his will!

"I am lucky to be well out of the succession," Legolas said, oblivious to Gandalf's thoughts. "Now that Namirion has a son of his own, King Thranduil lets me do as I please." He glanced back at the piles of stone and lumber that would one day be the new city of Dale. "And there is much to do. But I am happy to see you again, Mithrandir. Are you well?"

"More or less," Gandalf said. "Unless your kin have found another fortress lurking under the boughs of the Greenwood, in which case I am reduced to weakness and senility, and cannot be relied upon for anything."

"Worry not. In his current temper, Thranduil could break a dozen such strongholds without any force but his guards at his back. The dwarven king wears on his patience. Have you spoken to him of late?"

Gandalf chuckled. "No, but I've heard a great deal. If he and Thorin didn't spend so much time shouting at each other, I would think them in danger of becoming friends."

"He not so weak as that," Legolas said. "He holds his grudges even dearer than his children, and cossets them much the same. It would be a grim misfortune indeed that would drive him into alliance with Thorin Oakenshield again."

"Then I will not wish for either the misfortune or the friendship," Gandalf said. He didn't say it, but the shadow of Dol Guldur still stretched out long and menacing in his mind, casting all of the north into gloom. Still, no good would come of meddling or rumor-mongering.  He would let the young ones have their happiness, for as long as it might last.

"Come, Mithrandir, you look far too thoughtful," Legolas said.  "Let me take you down to Dale. It would gladden Bard to see you again, and it will give you happier things to think on."

"No, no—I am too old and wise to interrupt dwarves at work." Gandalf squinted his eyes, looking down at the busy, sprawling worksite. It reminded him of Beorn's orchards, and the beehives buzzing with the industry of their honest little laborers.  "By the looks of it, you and Bard have recruited the better part of Dain's army to the task. How did you manage it, may I ask?"

"I don't like to say."  A hint of embarrassment crept into Legolas' voice. "One of the dwarves in Thorin's company keeps a portrait of his wife and son.  I took advantage of his fatherly sentiment.  Bard was terribly vexed when he found out."

Gandalf looked at him, unconvinced; Legolas conceeded the point.  "Vexed, but not for long.  I fear that he is growing too fond of me to be angry."

It was a simple statement, made with no particular self-consciousness.  Gandalf raised his eyebrows nevertheless. The prince's affection for Girion had more than once led him close to disaster, if the gossip was to be believed, and Bard was so very much like his ancestors, in temper even more than looks. Eru's children could be so strange in matters of the heart.  If anything were to happen—if Bard grew too fond, as Legolas had so lightly put it—it would come near to breaking Thranduil's heart. It was no secret that Legolas was the Elvenking's favorite child, whatever squabbles they might have.

But that, too, was trouble for another day. "No, my friend. I will take my leave and let you get back to your work. I must find our Mister Baggins, and see what trouble he's gotten himself into since I saw him last."

"Send him my greetings," Legolas said. "And my thanks."

Gandalf didn't ask why. He had been there when Thranduil's soldiers carried Legolas off the battlefield, and he'd heard the story of Bilbo's improbable rescue soon after. Instead, he shooed Legolas back down to Dale, amused and worried in equal measure.  Sometimes, even elves were young enough that he felt more like a grandfather than one of the Istari. They were children, after all. Gandalf was charged with looking after them. All of them—Illúvatar's dear children, and Aulë's, and Yavanna's too, for he knew how well hobbits loved the land and growing things, and that alone would make them dear to Yavanna's heart. 

He watched as Legolas returned to the grounds of Dale, catching Bard up in a quick embrace before rejoining one of the work crews. They were digging foundations for a grand manor house, by the looks of it.  He had seen the ruin of so many brave little towns.  How long would this one last?  With a sigh, Gandalf turned away and walked back toward the main camp, occasionally stopping to ask after Bilbo Baggins. No one knew where he was, though one or two of the dwarves offered thoroughly unhelpful guesses. He caught sight of Balin and made his way over to say hello, but Balin was in a quiet, heated argument with a short old dwarf wearing very well-polished armor. Gandalf lingered just around the corner from them, exercising his wizardly right to snoop on conversations that were none of his business.

"You think I enjoy this, cousin?" Balin sounded bitter. "Whatever you think of the hobbit, he's a dear little fellow and I'm fond of him. But I serve Thorin, and I must do the king's will as best I know it. At the moment, that means talking to you."

"I see your exile hasn't entirely ruined your sense of propriety," the other dwarf said. "But you needn't scowl and take on so."

Gandalf peered around the corner. Balin, usually so kindly and mild-mannered, was looking at his cousin with the sort of dislike that he usually reserved for goblins, trolls, and anyone who threatened the line of Durin. "I'll keep it in mind, cousin Varin," he said stiffly. "If we could return to the matter of Dale—"

Varin. Gandalf took note of the name and ambled on.

He spotted Bofur and Bifur next—or rather, he caught a glimpse of Bifur, but was immediately distracted by the sight of Bofur launching himself through the air and knocking another dwarf to the ground with hawkish precision and a wild cry of triumph. "Tig!" he crowed, scrambling to his feet and darting out of reach while the other dwarf was still recovering from the shock.

Dwarves, Gandalf thought, with a huff of impatience that went unheard in the hullabaloo. Always fighting, and always a little too cheerful about it. It was a wonder of the world that any of them lived to adulthood, much less into old age.  Gandalf felt tired just watching them.

"Excuse me," he said, elbowing his way through the crowded, muddy playing field, using his height and his wooden staff to nudge the brawling players out of his way. "Yes, yes, that was an excellent tackle, Bofur. Excuse me." At last he made it to the other side, battered but mostly unbruised, his cloak and boots caked with mud. He looked back just in time to see Bofur throw himself into the game once again, this time at a dwarf who was more than twice his weight and looked like he could pummel a stone wall to dust without any particular effort.

In the end, he only found Bilbo by tripping over him. It was an understandable mistake. Hobbits were easy enough to stumble over in the general way of things, and invisible hobbits were, in Gandalf's opinion, far more trouble than they were worth.

"Confound you, Bilbo Baggins," Gandalf said, when he looked down to see what he had run into, just in time to see Bilbo turn visible, pocketing his mysterious gold ring with one hand and rubbing his head with the other.

"You kicked me," said Bilbo.

Gandalf looked down at him severely. "And you tripped me. What do you think you're doing, wandering around with a ring of invisibility and making a nuisance of yourself?"

Bilbo crossed his arms over his chest and scowled up at Gandalf. "I'm hiding."

"Hiding from whom?"

"From everyone. From Thorin, and Thranduil, and Balin, and that game of Tig, and the assortment of sour-faced idiots that Dain calls his lords, and from Dain himself for that matter. I'm sick to death of this place, Gandalf. I want to go home!"

"Do you indeed," Gandalf said, mildly. "Thorin will be glad to see you gone, of course."

"He—I suppose so," Bilbo said. He dropped his gaze to the ground.

"And you're of no particular use to anyone. It's not as if we have any more need of a burglar, do we?"

"Yes, well," Bilbo said.

"And it's not as if you have friends to miss you, is it? Oh, for the love of—stop wallowing in self-pity and agreeing with every absurd thing I say!"

That startled the hobbit out of his little cloud of unhappiness.  "That was extraordinarily rude," he said, once he recovered his composure. "Carrying on like that. I might have believed you."

"And you, my dear Bilbo, are being extraordinarily foolish, if you think your presence here is worth so little. I've come to the conclusion that hobbits in general are quite remarkable. You are no exception."

"Well, I don't feel remarkable. And you were right, weren't you? At least about Thorin."

He did look very ordinary, standing there with his shoulders slumped and all of his borrowed finery long since discarded. No mithril shirts for Bilbo Baggins, not anymore—after all, he wasn't a soldier, or a lord, or indeed even a burglar.

Gandalf reminded himself to be patient with Bilbo and Thorin both. They had settled their differences before, and they would do it again without a wizard's meddling. "Sometimes even the most worthwhile folk think themselves to be silly and useless," he said. "Even I feel silly and useless on occasion, though I assure you that I'm neither."

"Certainly not," Bilbo said. "You make excellent fireworks."

"So I do. While you are uncommonly good at talking to proud, stubborn kings, and reminding them that they ought to be decent to one another. It may be thankless work," he added, when Bilbo looked unconvinced, "but you are doing more good than you realize."

"I suppose I should take your word for it," Bilbo said with a sigh. "And go to Council. We've a meeting at midday, and I think that we're about to get our finances settled."

"Oh?"

"You may look as skeptical as you like. But there are more important things in this world than gold and jewels, I'll have you know."

"So I've heard," Gandalf said. He considerately didn't mention that barely a fortnight ago the dwarves had almost gone to war over just such treasure. "Off you go, then. I won't keep you when you've duties to attend. And no more of this invisibility nonsense! Powerful rings are not trinkets, to be so idly used."

"Don't be ridiculous," said Bilbo. "There's no harm in it, provided I watch where I'm going."

Gandalf harrumphed, but he let the matter go. One day, when things were settled and he could indulge his curiosity, he might take a closer look at that plain old ring. If the weapons of ancient lords could find their way to a troll hoard along the Great East Road, there was no knowing what strange relics might have been lurking in the mountains under Goblintown.

Perhaps the ring was nothing but a useful trifle, or perhaps it too had once belonged to some fallen king. One way or another, Saruman would certainly know. He was a master in such history. Besides, there was something familiar in the craftsmanship, some undefinable presence that slumbered just beyond Gandalf's sight or understanding.

Could it be—of course.  Gandalf nearly crowed in triumph. He had it. How could he have been so blind? 

It was certainly Fëanor's work, or perhaps it had been crafted by one of his sons. It had that same quiet power, and the same understated artistry. In the absence of a maker's mark there was all the matchless arrogance of Fëanor son of Finwë, who knew that no one could ever mistake his creations for the work of a lesser smith.  How strange, for such a thing to end up in the pocket of a Baggins from the Shire!  Bilbo could have no notion that he had stumbled upon the legacy of such dread kings and lords.

Gandalf resumed his wanderings as Bilbo headed off to his Council, feeling no little satisfaction. He wouldn't need to go to Saruman for help, after all.

He spent the next few hours poking around the camp, enjoying the faint touch of sunshine and occasionally pausing to talk with one of the dwarves. He had a friendly conversation with Bombur, who was busy looking over their modest inventory of foodstuffs, and kept on asking Ori to check and recheck the totals, as if a few hundredweight of dried meat and flour might appear by some magic of arithmetic. Some time later he found Glóin talking to the camp cobbler, and listened patiently while Glóin ranted to him about the shameful way that humans neglected their children. But he was feeling dim and tired by then, leaning more and more heavily on his staff to keep standing upright. He made his way back to his quiet refuge, more or less abandoned now that the elven army had returned to Mirkwood, and settled down for an afternoon doze.

He was just drifting off, his pipe in his mouth and legs stretched out in front of him, when Bilbo Baggins came running pell-mell towards him.

"What on earth is the matter?" Gandalf asked, a touch cross about the interruption to his well-deserved rest. "Surely it can wait."

"It's Kili," Bilbo gasped, hands on his knees as he struggled to catch his breath. "We were in Council, but something happened—Fili said to hurry, he said to fetch a healer."

Gandalf was already on his feet and striding away, Bilbo trailing along behind him. As they drew closer to the dwarven side of the camp, he could hear a cacophony of shouts and cries. A few voices stood distinct above the rest. Fili, loud and strident. Thorin snapping orders, telling the others to stand back; Thranduil demanding to be let inside the tent, to see to the prince.

When Gandalf rounded the corner, he was immediately mobbed with a dozen dwarves all asking him to do something—anything. Gandalf ignored them all. There were only two people who might have any useful information for him.

"Thranduil," he said. "Speak to me, friend."

The king spared a last sneer for Thorin and turned to face the wizard. "The boy is coming to consciousness at last," he said. "His brother says that he's been stirring for days now, fitfully at best. Now he's speaking nonsense, and his limbs are seizing. But he will not respond to word or touch. It could be that his mind is gone, and his body is acting on animal instinct."

"He's not," Fili snarled. He was fighting to be let back into the tent where the dwarven healers were attending to Kili, struggling viciously against his captors. Dwalin and Glóin together could barely restrain him. "His mind isn't gone. He's _here_. He just can't wake up. Let me go, let me see to him—"

Thranduil ignored him, still speaking urgently to Gandalf. "I must see the child myself," he said. "He will do himself harm, or the healers will kill him and call it mercy."

"If there is no hope," Gandalf said, quietly, hating the very thought of it, "then perhaps it would be for the best."

" _If_ there is no hope. I am not convinced of that. Prince Fili may be crazed with grief, but if he is not, then we must do as he says. He speaks for his brother."

"Gandalf, you could do something," Bilbo said, suddenly. "You woke Thorin after he was knocked unconscious. After the eagles rescued us, you said something—a spell, or a prayer—and he opened his eyes, just like that."

Gandalf shook his head. "I've already tried, I'm afraid. It was only hours after the battle. Kili didn't stir."

"But it's different now, isn't it? He might be better. Closer to us."

Fili stilled in Dwalin's arms. "Can you, Gandalf? Can you wake him?"

"No," he said, firmly. "And I am sorry for it." But now Thorin was looking at him too, and Dwalin, and all the rest, as if he was some worker of great magic, or even Mandos himself, who could bring even the dead back to life.

But he was only Gandalf the Grey, not strongest even among the Istari. He was weak and tired, and some things were too broken for even wizards to fix.

"Please," Fili said, desperately. "Kili's only a boy. He's barely of age. He deserves so much better than this. If you need a life to trade, you can have mine. But let my brother live."

"I will not work magic like that." Gandalf ignored the whispering temptation, the seductive voice that said _you can, though, you can_. _You could be great, Olórin. Stronger even than Saruman—as strong as your brother who ruled in Mordor. You too carry a ring of power._

He ignored the voice, but it pressed on, as if the Necromancer's words still lingered in the wind, as if Sauron himself were standing beside him, to whisper in his ear.  It had not been so very long since his captivity, since he had come face to face with the greatest terror in Arda. 

_Would it be so wrong to let one child live, when the other wishes to sacrifice his own? You would be doing them a kindness. A mercy. Did not Nienna teach you pity? Pity these children now, and do as they plead._

"Please," Bilbo said, one hand fiddling anxiously with something in his pocket. His ring.  He kept casting glances at Fili, and back up at Gandalf. "Please do something, Gandalf."

_Olórin, wisest and kindest of my brothers, be wise now. Be merciful. A life for a life, is that not a fair exchange? It would be so easy. I would give you the strength you lack. Olórin!_

"Yes," Gandalf said aloud, but it was another power that spoke through him. "Yes, Fili. I will do what I can."

Fili sagged with relief. Dwalin took his weight, holding him upright. "Steady, prince," he said, but he was looking at Gandalf with sudden suspicion.

Thorin was not so quiet in his doubts. "What do you mean to do?" he demanded, placing himself solidly in front of Gandalf. It was nonsense to think that he could bar the wizard from doing as he liked. Even strong and unwounded, Thorin was not his match in battle. But still he stood in front of the tent, guarding Kili with his body and the sheer stubbornness of his will. "You are not yourself."

Gandalf ignored him. He had been afraid. Of death, and of the Enemy, and of faltering in his duty. He wondered at his own weakness—to be frightened of his own shadow! But now he was strong, and his mind was afire with the knowledge of it. It burned away all shadows. He had nothing to fear.

Narya glowed on his finger, scorching like pale fire. But he did not feel it.

He brushed Thorin aside, and stepped into the tent.

 _A life for a life_.

He dismissed the dwarven healers with a wave of his hand, a casual word. They knew his presence, and feared him even if they did now know why. They obeyed. He looked down at Kili, the poor dear child—at his pale skin, so fragile and scarred, at the dark lashes that fluttered as he tossed and turned, caught up in some unseen nightmare.

Gandalf stood beside him, watching him thoughtfully. He did not know how to summon the spirits of the dead, or how to trade one for the soul of one still living. But he had felt the spells the Necromancer had used in Dol Guldur.  It would not be difficult to recreate them, not with this new power burning through his veins. Would it be easier because the two were brothers? He supposed so.

He closed his eyes and began the chant. But soon he stopped, frowning. He had always used Quenya for his spells, even the little ones, like lighting his fireworks.Why had he ever bothered with those?  There were far more interesting things to be done with black powder.  

Quenya was the language of Valinor, and it had always suited him well. But it was not enough. It was too soft, too gentle, for the work he had to do now. He wondered for a moment what words to use, but the answer came to him quickly enough. When he spoke again, he was surprised at how easily the new tongue came to him.  He had never known he was so fluent in the Black Speech.

 _See how simple it can be, Olórin? You could do so much good, if only you gave yourself leave. There is nothing to be afraid of_.

Outside, the wind was picking up. Fili shuddered, though Dwalin was a strong, warm presence behind him, still holding him close.

"Are you well?" Thorin asked him, torn between his desire to keep an eye on the wizard and his need to look after his heir. "Fili?"

"It's nothing, uncle," Fili said, letting his eyes drift shut. "I'm just a little tired. And it's so very cold."

Gandalf heard none of this. For him, there was nothing but the words and the fire of his own newfound strength, nothing but the spirits he was speaking to, speaking so friendly and kind. His was the voice of healer. Of course it was; he only wanted to help. It was an act of mercy he was doing.

There was another voice, too. A different voice. But Gandalf dismissed it.

It persisted. Gandalf quieted it again, more forcefully this time, with a spell that should have silenced the meddler's voice forever. Still, it kept talking, chattering, obnoxiously _there_ despite his attempts to stop it.

Eventually, his old curiosity got the better of him. Gandalf, or the one who might have been Gandalf, spared a second to listen to what the voice was saying.

"—and I'm sure you're not doing anything wrong, because you're Gandalf and you always get us out of scrapes. You're the only one of the Big Folk that's even taken an honest interest in the Shire, did you know that? You were so kind to my mother, and you made fireworks for the Old Took's birthday, and I was only a little lad but I remember it like it was yesterday—"

It was Bilbo. Gandalf felt a brief spark of satisfaction at his words. _See? Fireworks have their uses. And black powder can be dangerous. Better to use it at birthday parties than on the battlefield._

"—and I don't mean to be rude, but you're not listening and something's wrong with Fili, and I don't know what you're doing but it's making me so terribly afraid—"

Suddenly, he remembered what he'd said to Lady Galadriel, months ago in Rivendell. _Perhaps it is because I am afraid, and he gives me courage_.

"—so if you could just say something, Gandalf, something that wasn't that wretched chanting, I promise I'll leave. But until then, I'm going to stay right here, and I'm going to keep bothering you. So—so there!"

Gandalf blinked, and straightened up.

How very odd he felt! His throat was dry and scratchy, and his head ached, and everything felt so very dim and muzzy. Cobwebs, he thought, for no apparent reason. Cobwebs in my mind.

"I'm sorry, my dear Bilbo," he said. "I'm feeling rather faint. I was trying to wake Kili, wasn't I?"

"I—I think so," said Bilbo, a little uncertain. He was flexing his fingers, as if he had been holding something very tightly in his hand, and his joints were protesting the force of his grip. "You were saying something in a strange language."

"Quenya," Gandalf said, automatically. There was a thought on the edge of his consciousness, just out of his reach. He went looking for it, but it fluttered away. Well, it couldn't have been so very important; it would come back to him sooner or later. "It's the language of the Valar, and of the high elves that still dwell in Valinor. A very holy tongue."

"Oh. I see." Bilbo said, his brow furrowed.

Gandalf returned to the task at hand. He murmured a few quiet words, drawing his hand across Kili's face. Nothing. Kili had gone still and quiet again, though the tangled blankets and the blood oozing from his reopened wounds were proof of a violent struggle.

He didn't opened his eyes, or speak.

"I'm sorry," Gandalf said. "It was as I feared. He's too far gone to be reached, at least by any skill that I possess."

It would ruin Thorin, to lose his youngest heir. And it would kill Fili as surely as any mortal wound. For a moment, Gandalf was tempted to try again, this time with a stronger sort of magic. He thought for a moment about Fili's request, his offer to trade a life for a life, but of course that was ridiculous. That was necromancy, and Gandalf could not bring himself to venture down that road. Why, even if he wanted to, he wouldn't know where to start. And that was just as it should be.

_Olórin!_

Gandalf was busy talking to Bilbo. He did not hear the voice. He had never heard it, at least not that he could recall.

Bilbo didn't hear it either. He swallowed hard. "I guess that's it, then."  And then, even as they turned to leave, Kili stirred. It was not the uncontrollable seizing that had so terrified his brother, or the small twitching of animal instinct. It was slow and deliberate.

He opened his eyes. 

"Fili," he said, though the name was nothing more than a tiny exhaled breath. "Fili?"

Gandalf raised his voice. "Fili," he said, shakily. "Your brother is asking for you."

There was the sound of a struggle, a shout—a string of curses. Fili broke free from Dwalin's hold and was inside the tent before anyone could even think about stopping him.

Gandalf stepped back to give the children some privacy. He was still unsteady on his feet, though he didn't understand why. Perhaps his morning walk around the camp had tired him more than he realized.

Thorin appeared, too, but he hesitated for a moment. "May I?" he asked. "I don't want to disturb him."

Gandalf was too lost in thought to answer. He heard Bilbo's quiet reply: "I think he'll be glad to see you, your majesty. But maybe we should keep everyone else out, just for now."

Dwalin heard and obeyed, barring the entrance from any curious onlookers or well-wishers. "Go on, lads," he said to the assembled dwarves. "Get about your work. You'll be able to gawk at the princes soon enough. In the meantime, leave 'em be."

After a few small sips of water and a moment to rest, Kili was almost coherent again. But he was confused, and Fili had to tell him that the battle had been won a dozen times before it finally seemed to sink in. Gandalf kept an eye on him, wary lest he should lose control or lash out again.

He didn't. But eventually he noticed that Fili kept glancing at his right side, compulsively: little darting glances in between his reassuring words. And so Kili looked, too.

"Oh," he said, blankly.

He reached over to touch the place where his arm should have been, as if his eyes were deceiving him and he would surely feel flesh and bone, reassuringly solid, beneath his fingers.

He felt only the rough old cotton of the bed sheets. His lips parted in shock.

"My arm," he said. "My—my arm. It's gone. How am I going to shoot? How am I going to work in a forge?"

"Don't worry," Fili said, hurriedly. "We've home in Erebor now, like uncle always wanted. We're princes. You won't have to fight anymore, or earn your keep. You don't have to worry about anything, I promise. I'll look after you."

"But I don't want to be looked after. I don't. I want to fight, to guard your back—"

"You will." Fili's voice cracked. "Look at me, Kili, please."

Kili tore his gaze away from the ruin of his arm. He was breathing fast and shallow. "I don't. I can't—"

"You can. I promise. We'll do it together, just like always. Nothing we can't do when we're together, isn't that what mother always said?"

Kili shook his head. "Don't think this is what she meant."

Fili knelt beside him, as close as he could, as if he could prove Kili wrong by touch alone when words had failed. "Kili, I swear. You're not healed, not yet, but you're going to get better. We'll go out to battle again, and you'll always have my back. You've just—you've got to trust me. Please?"

Kili looked up at him.  "I trust you," he whispered. "Always trust you, brother."  He reached out with his one good hand, and Fili took it.

Gandalf left. He wasn't needed, and this was no place for an outsider. Thorin and Fili would look after their kin, and Bilbo would take care of the rest of the dwarves while the royal family was occupied.

Poor child, he thought. But Kili had his family to look after him, and to see him through the wretched months to come. It was a better fate than Gandalf had dared to dream of. More than once he had looked at Thorin's young nephews and felt only sadness, though he didn't know why. Even as they laughed and sang and made mischief, he grieved for them. He had known that they would not live to see their home restored.

But the battle was won, and still they lived.  Even wizards, it seemed, were sometimes proven wrong.

Gandalf was glad of it.

"Are you well?" Thranduil asked. The Elvenking had been waiting outside the tent, refusing to leave no matter how Dwalin glared. "You seem—unsettled."

"Do I?" Gandalf said, absently. He still feared he might be forgetting something, but he was too tired to chase after the thought. "Perhaps. Dol Guldur left me worn and tired, and my mind is ill at ease. But no matter. We must speak of other things. You will be leaving soon, now that Thorin is up and about."

"Yes," said Thranduil, his head tilted curiously as he looked at Gandalf. "My work here is all but done, and Tauriel has sent word that I am needed in my own kingdom. Give me a few hours yet to tend my patient, and then we may talk. But I still think you are not entirely yourself, Mithrandir."

Gandalf waved the concern away. "It is only a moment of weakness," he said. "I am tired. It will pass."

Indeed, the fresh air did him good. The further he walked, the better he felt, and soon he wasn't even leaning on his staff for support.

It was just as he'd told Thranduil: nothing more than a passing thing.

* * *

Sooner rather than later, Kili fell asleep. Fili watched him anxiously, but it was nothing more than commonplace exhaustion, and he could be awakened by a shake of his shoulder. "Go away," he mumbled, when Fili tried it. "I'm tired."

Fili hovered, uncertain. "I don't want to leave him," he said. "I want to be here when he wakes up. He might be scared, or confused. I don't think he's remembering things very well."

Thorin, who had exchanged only a few brief words with Kili before the boy's eyes had fluttered shut, was equally reluctant to leave. But he wouldn't be able to stay standing for much longer. Thranduil had warned him once again not to stir himself from bed, and once again Thorin had ignored him. He had rushed headlong out of the pavilion the moment he'd heard that something was wrong with Kili, and he had spent the last hour in a haze of agony.

"Give him time," he told Fili. "And be patient, as I know you are. Dwalin will keep watch outside, along with the other guards. Keep your brother company by taking a few hours of rest yourself."

Fili protested, but Thorin would not be swayed. "You're worn down to the bone," he said. "And you'll be no good for your brother if you don't get a full night of sleep and one or two proper meals."

"It's not that easy." Fili tugged at his simple braids, nervously. "I'm not hungry. And what if something happens while I sleep?"

Thorin sighed. "One foot in front of the other, lad. Sleep. Stay close to Kili, if it makes you feel better. And then in the morning, we can have breakfast together. The three of us, just like we used to. Good enough?"

Fili nodded, reluctant but always obedient. "Yes, uncle."

Thorin lingered for a moment longer, eyes fixed on the steady rise and fall of Kili's chest. He was alive. He would never be the same, but he was still Kili, still the boy who had stood over his uncle's body and dared Azog to come closer.

"I'll look after him," Fili promised, as if it had ever been a question.

Thorin left. He knew that it wasn't enough, but he could do no better. His nephews had all the love he could give them, and all the strength he knew how to lend.

_Mahal, do better for them than I can. Take care of them when I cannot._

It was only late afternoon, and the sunlight was warm on his face. Bilbo was lingering outside, just as anxious as Fili, but likely for different reasons.  "Let me help you," he said. "Just for a moment. You don't have to forgive me. I won't even mention it again.  Only let me help."

Thorin didn't respond. He stood just outside the tent, contemplating the short walk to his pavilion. It might as well have been a hundred miles, in his current state. He would never make it without someone to lean on.

Dwalin was still standing guard, and he straightened when Thorin glanced his way. "I'll keep you company," he offered. "If you'd like."

"No," Thorin said. "I promised Fili that you would stay close." He didn't miss the quick glance that Dwalin and Bilbo exchanged. It was enough to make him sigh and give up the fight entirely, at least for the moment.

"Come along, then," he said to Bilbo. "It seems that everyone in this camp is determined that we should be friends, at least everyone that I regard with any favor. You may see me to my pavilion, so long as you promise to keep quiet."

"I promise," Bilbo said. And true to his word, he said nothing as they made their slow way back, Thorin leaning more heavily on Bilbo with every step. He was not a light burden, particularly not for a hobbit, but Bilbo never complained.

"Thank you," Thorin said, gruffly, when they arrived at last.

Bilbo's eyes widened, and his lips twitched into a tentative smile. "You're welcome," he said. "I suppose I'll see you soon?"

"It seems I cannot escape it," Thorin said. 

Bilbo took his leave.  Thorin squared his shoulders, and entered the pavilion. He knew precisely what was waiting for him, and he was right. There was Thranduil, standing with his arms crossed over his chest and his blue eyes sharp.

" _Now_ will you let me tend your wounds, O King?" he asked. "Or must we have another round of quarreling before you condescend to let me help you?"

Thorin sat down on the bed without a word of protest, and began the painful process of taking off his tunic. Lifting his arms over his head was such a dizzying ordeal that he almost passed out then and there, but Thranduil appeared by his side to steady him. Thorin shrugged away from the touch, but Thranduil was insistent.

"You cannot always be strong," he said. He neatly folded up Thorin's tunic and set it aside, examining the bloodstained bandages underneath with a critical eye. "There is no shame in it. Sometimes, when others are willing to lend you their own strength, you must accept it."

"Why do we always talk about the hobbit?" Thorin was weary down to the bone, so tired that every breath was a struggle. He kept breathing anyway.

Thranduil knelt beside him and began cleaning his wounds, working with a quick, distant touch. His hands were cool against the furnace of Thorin's chest. "I ask myself the same question."

"Sometimes I think he's the strongest of all of us," Thorin said, talking to distract himself from the discomfort.  If Thranduil was surprised, he didn't show it.

"Maybe he is, in his own way. You and I were made for war. It was in our blood and our cradles. But your halfling was born in a kindly land, and he isn't the child of kings." Thranduil soaked a cloth in a clear liquid that burned and stung when he pressed it into Thorin's raw skin. Thorin gasped, a deep indrawn breath that hissed through his clenched teeth. "Don't whine," he said, as if Thorin was doing anything of the sort. "And hold still."

"If I move, Elvenking, I promise that you'll know it," Thorin said darkly.

"Striking a healer is poor form."

"You're not a healer. You're my own personal bane, crawled up from the Void to torment me."

Thranduil pressed the soaked cloth to Thorin's chest again, keeping contact for longer than strictly necessary. Thorin flinched, biting his lip hard to keep from making a sound. "I think you're confusing me with another old enemy," said Thranduil. "Perhaps your wits are addled. Did you take a knock to the head, like your halfling?"

Thorin took a few deep, ragged breathing, struggling with the pain. "How did it happen?" he asked, when he regained his voice. "I remember that he was hurt, but little more."

"He was knocked aside during the fight for Raven Hill.  There was a great deal of blood, but no cracks in his skull or swelling in his brain. He suffered only a slight loss of memory, which" —his lips pursed— "he may recover, in time."

"His memory?" Thorin said, alarmed. "What—does he not—"

"You needn't fret. It would take more than a blow to the head to forget anything about you, Thorin Oakenshield, else I might dash myself against a rock and try it for myself. And I treated his wounds personally, though one of your Company looked ready to fight me for the honor."

"Oín," said Thorin.

Thranduil hummed noncommittally.  "If you were so concerned about the halfling's injuries, you might have asked him yourself. He stayed with you the night of the battle, as I recall. Were you too busy with kingly affairs to speak of anything else?"

"I was busy dying," Thorin gritted out. It was just like the Elvenking to stick his pretty blond head in and interrupt his enemy's death. "But if he is slow to heal, I expect you're to blame for it. You're the one that's been running him ragged with petty work—fetching your meals and letters, as if you haven't got servants of your own."

"Someone's been telling tales.  Was it your bruiser, or the fretting child with the sweater and scarf?"  Thranduil fetched a clean set of bandages and motioned for Thorin to sit up. He bit his lip and obeyed, ignoring the spike of discomfort that the movement caused, and Thranduil began rewrapping his chest. Thorin loathed the bandages, but they helped with the discomfort, and he knew that they kept his ribs from shifting out of place when he moved.

"The halfling is stubborn," Thranduil said as he worked. "I would rather he got more rest. He hasn't been eating well, and he sleeps only infrequently. But that's no fault of mine."

"Why isn't he sleeping?"

"Have you forgotten your first battle? The halfling was an innocent, untouched by violence or cruelty, before you stole him away to fight in your wars."

"He's having nightmares." Thorin ignored the accusation that he had compelled Bilbo to do anything again his will. Bilbo was no child, and Thorin had realized in the early days of their quest that bossing a hobbit into obedience was like dragging a recalcitrant cow through mud. They simply dug their feet in and refused to move.

Thranduil looked pityingly at him, like a parent might look at an uncommonly slow child. "Of course he is. I suppose you think less of him for it."

Thorin said nothing. But his expression must have given something away, because Thranduil made a soft noise of understanding.  Of course Thorin wouldn't think less of Bilbo for waking unsettled in the night, or for seeing wretched things when he closed his eyes. Thorin had dreamt of the gates of Moria for years.

Thranduil finished his work at last, and let Thorin collapse back against his makeshift bed.

"You will be glad to know that your misadventures have done you no lasting harm," he said. "Though I would not recommend you try your luck a third time. Your bones are not made of metal, to be pieced back together with fire and forge. You must be patient."

There was an odd sort of finality in the words.  Thorin watched the Elvenking as he got up and made to leave. He packed away his supplies, as usual, but then he began gathering up odds and ends: a few scattered sheets of parchment, a sheathed dagger, a pretty mithril pendant on a thin silver chain. It was almost as if—

Oh. "You're leaving. Going back to Mirkwood."

Thranduil met his eyes, his mouth curving into a small, sardonic smile. "You may rejoice as you please, but don't overindulge. I've spent too long saving your life to let you waste it on idle recklessness."

"If you're expecting thanks, you'll get none from me," Thorin said. "You've owed my family since the day you abandoned us to a dragon."

Thranduil looked around one last time, his eyes falling briefly on the Arkenstone, still sitting at Thorin's bedside. "You're luckier than you deserve, Thorin son of Thráin. See that you remember it."

"Goodbye and good riddance," said Thorin.  "You may consider your debt repaid, if you like."

Thranduil was already gone, but Thorin heard his soft, mocking voice drifting back. "I healed you under sufferance, but it was not for your sake. Farewell!"

Thorin took a moment to enjoy his newfound peace. Outside there was clamor and conversation, and he thought he could hear Thranduil's voice in the distance, giving orders to one of his guards. But all was quiet in the pavilion, save for the sound of his breathing and the rustling of the wind.

He picked up the Arkenstone, weighing it in his hands. It was such a little thing, barely the size of his calloused hand, glowing softly in the dim light. No star in the sky could compare; no other treasure in Erebor had been valued so much. Thrór would have died for it. Would he have been proud to know that his grandson had been willing to do the same?

Silence. If the old king's spirit still lingered in the halls of the mountain, it didn't deign to speak to him. And if there was anything of the kingdom Thorin had once loved hidden behind the weathered rock, it was just as far away from him as ever. Thorin set the Arkenstone aside, carefully, and closed his eyes to the emptiness that surrounded him.

It shouldn't have been so hard to fall asleep. Thorin was used to being alone, and solitude had never troubled him. He reminded himself of that as lay awake, his chest aching with every shallow breath, the Arkenstone shining soft and white in the darkness.

* * *

Bilbo appeared several hours later, quite literally out of thin air. Thorin, who was still lying awake and wondering vaguely how Kili was doing, would have been more surprised if he hadn't heard the hobbit rustling around in the corner of the pavilion for several minutes, presumably gathering his own belongings.

"Oh, drat it!" Bilbo whispered, as he suddenly became visible. His ring had fallen off his finger. It rolled across the bumpy ground and settled with a small _thunk_ only a few inches away from Thorin's hand.

Thorin picked it up before Bilbo could reach it. "What are you doing here?" he asked, holding the ring between his thumb and forefinger. Bilbo reached for it, scowling; Thorin drew back.

"I just came to get some of my things," Bilbo said, glancing from the ring to Thorin's dimly-lit face, and back again. "It's cold out, so I thought I might find a blanket. Give that back, why don't you?"

Thorin scrutinized the piece of jewelry, admiring its workmanship. This was not ordinary gold, though most eyes would be fooled by its pretty, plain style. Maybe he should take it for himself. A ring of invisibility could be useful.

"If you take my ring," Bilbo said, "after calling me a thief and a traitor for stealing your precious Arkenstone, I am going to be extremely cross with you."

Thorin raised his eyebrows and handed the ring back. He would rather have kept it. But Bilbo would complain endlessly if he did, and do his best to make Thorin's life a misery.

Bilbo snatched it away from him and shoved it into his pockets. "Thank you."

"It's a trifle," Thorin said.

"Yes, but it's my trifle, and I quite like it." He returned to his corner, and began gathering up his things: a ragged old blanket, the threadbare pack that he had carried with him since before Mirkwood, his little sword. It was a stark contrast to the fine trinkets that Thranduil had kept with him, but Thorin had grown accustomed to the clutter. He realized belatedly that Bilbo must have been sleeping in the pavilion in the aftermath of the battle, and only left after Thorin regained consciousness.

"Where are you staying?" he asked.

Bilbo shrugged. "Haven't the faintest. I've spent the last few nights with Fili and Kili, but I don't want to bother them. I won't bother you again, either, if that's what you're worried about."

It wasn't. Thorin hesitated, his pride warring with his inborn desire to protect. He looked after his people. Isn't that was a king was supposed to do?

"You can stay here."

Bilbo actually laughed. It was a small, unhappy sound. He didn't stop packing.  For the first time, it occurred to Thorin that Bilbo could vanish, just like that. Not only by wearing that ring. He could pack his belongings and go down to Dale, or to Mirkwood, or back across the mountains to his little home in the Shire. His contract had been fulfilled, and Thorin was alive to speak for himself. There was nothing more to keep him.  Thorin should have been pleased by the realization. After all, Bilbo was an enormous amount of trouble. And yet—

"Stay," he said again. "The nights are cold here."

"I hadn't noticed," Bilbo said, stuffing the tattered remains of his spare shirt in the pack.

"Don't be willful, halfling. I'm doing you a kindness."

Bilbo's lips moved soundlessly for several moments. "I'm sorry," he managed at last. "Did you just tell me not to be willful? You—you, Thorin Oakenshield—are telling this to me?"

Thorin, who had spent years navigating the stormy waters of his sister's temperament, and had endured the tantrums of his youngest nephew since Kili was a yowling babe in the cradle, was not oblivious to the sudden tension in the air. But he had spent the last days fighting with the Elvenking, and the last century of his life fighting everything else. He was sick of it.

For the first time in almost a hundred years, he stopped fighting back.

"I am," he said, meeting Bilbo's incredulous stare as best he could in the shadows. "And now I'm asking you. Stay. Please."

Bilbo let his pack drop to the floor, and he kicked it into the corner with his foot. But he didn't sit back down, and he didn't come any closer to Thorin. "You can't keep doing this to me. I'm not a piece of treasure, to be dusted off when you want me and tossed aside when you haven't any interest."

"I trusted you to carry out my will after I was dead." Thorin struggled to keep his voice even. "You allied yourself with my enemies instead."

"They're not your enemies," Bilbo said. "You don't understand. I know you think you do, but you don't. How it's been here since the battle, and how we've been looking after each other—you could do so much good, Thorin, if only you let yourself."

Haven't I done enough? Thorin wanted to demand. Haven't I suffered enough to satisfy you? Perhaps he should have died on the battlefield, and left the ruling to someone else.Thorin knew now that he wasn't a good king. He didn't even know how to become one. 

He wished for his grandfather as he hadn't in years, because once Thrór had been the best of kings. Thorin clung to that, to his faded childhood memories of hiding behind the throne when his father was looking for him; the way that Thrór had commanded the eyes of his Council and his kingdom, and the easy confidence of his steps. Thorin had only been a little boy, running to keep up with Thrór's great strides. Even then he had known that his grandfather was strong and good and kind.  Thrór had always known what to do—until, one day, he hadn't. That was the way Thorin remembered it.

Thorin didn't know what to do, either.

Bilbo was a dim shape in the moonlight, a shadow, a soft voice. "You have soldiers who would die for you, friends who would do your bidding with all the love they have. You led them home to the mountain. Now they're just sitting on the threshold, waiting for you. I don't understand."

Thorin reached out a hand, and then let it drop. Pointless. Bilbo couldn't see him in the darkness.  "Neither do I," he said.

But perhaps Bilbo had seen him after all, because the hobbit took a few soft steps towards him, and then settled down at his side. It was only right for Thorin to put an arm around his shoulders, to draw him closer. His hand brushed against the bare skin of Bilbo's neck, just beneath his tangled curls, and in that simple touch he felt something break inside of him. It hurt like a branding, like a mace buried inside his chest. It hurt like dragonfire.

He didn't have the words for it. He knew that Bilbo didn't understand, but there was nothing to be done about that. "I don't know what to do," he said, helplessly. "There's no one else."

"I'm here," Bilbo said. "I won't leave until you tell me to. Maybe not even then."

Thorin closed his eyes, struggled to compose himself. One foot in front of the other. There would be time tomorrow, and the day after, to talk about treaties and the Council, and their dwindling stores of food, and what precisely a king's speaker had the right to do. There would be time for arguments, and perhaps for making amends.

"If you are to stay," he said, "you must learn to do I as say. You may argue with me in private as you like, but a king cannot be shamed in front of his subjects. Can you manage that?"

"I think so," Bilbo said, voice muffled. He curled up at Thorin's side, a soft warm weight pressed against the rough cotton of Thorin's shirt. Even that gentle touch hurt, but Thorin could bear it. "Provided you keep two things in mind."

"Oh?"

"I still haven't forgotten that you almost tossed me off the battlements. And I'm perfectly capable of calling you an idiot, even if I have to wait until we're alone to do it."

Thorin floundered for a moment. "I wonder that you can bear to be around me," he said. "It would do no good to apologize, but—"

"Oh, please do apologize. Maybe it will do some good after all. You won't know until you try."

Thorin wasn't in the humor for teasing, so he fell back on the formalities that he had learned as a child. "As you wish. Mister Baggins, I've done you a great disservice. And I ask your forgiveness for it. For—"

"Holding me over a battlement," Bilbo prompted.

Thorin struggled between rage and embarrassment, and settled on a weary resignation. "For holding you over a battlement," he said. "And for banishing you on pain of death. For not honoring the strict terms of your contract."

"Carry on," said Bilbo, sounding entirely too cheerful. "For saying that I looked like a grocer—"

"I'm not apologizing for telling the truth."

"You told the truth rudely."

"I regret the wound to your delicate sensibilities," he said, stiffly.

Bilbo was so close that when he laughed, quiet but sincere, Thorin could feel his shoulders shake. "No, you don't."

"You accept my apologies, then?"

"Why—yes," Bilbo said, sobering a little. "I do. You weren't quite yourself, you know. But I'll be much less forgiving the second time around. In the future, whenever you feel inclined to throw me down a mountain, perhaps we might discuss the matter first?"

It was quite possibly the most damning condemnation Thorin could have imagined. The fact that Bilbo meant well by it, and did not intend for the gentle sarcasm to sting, only made it worse.

Thorin knew the truth, though he would never speak of it.  The Arkenstone hadn't driven him mad, or poisoned his mind, or seduced him to cruelty and malice. He had never felt stronger than when he'd sworn vengeance on those who had laid siege to his mountain, or when he'd threatened death to the inoffensive little hobbit who had traveled so far with him, and through so many dangers.

" _Kili_ ," he had said, " _if you ever see Bilbo Baggins again, you will shoot him. Is that understood?_ "  And Kili had nodded, dumbly, speechless with shock. He wouldn't have obeyed, of course. Thorin knew that now. At the time, the thought hadn't even occurred to him. Kili was loyal, so he would follow his king's orders; he had thought no more of it.

 _You weren't quite yourself._ But he had been. That was the worst of it.

"I should beg your forgiveness, too," Bilbo said. "While we're both so quiet and peaceable. You know, I think this is the longest proper conversation we've ever had?"

Thorin stayed silent, but Bilbo was talking in a sleepy, drifting way, too tired to pay much attention to what Thorin wasn't saying. "I'm sorry for stealing your Arkenstone, or at least I'm sorry that it made you so very upset. And I'm sorry for going against your wishes so often—only I'm not sure I would do anything differently given the chance. I suppose that means I'm not particularly sorry, doesn't it?"

"You're talking nonsense," Thorin said. "Go to sleep."

"Should I leave?"

"No." Thranduil had said that he wasn't getting enough rest. And it felt right, somehow, to have Bilbo settling in to sleep beside him. He thought of the first hours after the battle: when he'd known with a certainty that he was dying, and Bilbo had stayed beside him the whole long night, faithful through it all.

Bilbo made a small noise of contentment. "Good. I'm awfully tired all of a sudden. Not sure I could move if I tried. But tell me if I'm being a nuisance, or if you want your blanket back, or—"

"Sleep," Thorin ordered sternly. "Now."

For once, Bilbo did as he was told.

* * *

Gandalf was sitting alone, wrapped in his cloak and smoking a pipe, contemplative. It was a clear night, but foul weather was rolling in from the northwest, soaking up the starlight and drowning it in dark clouds.

Thranduil appeared at his side, silent, like a wraith with golden hair. One of his soldiers stood a modest distance behind.

"My escort," he said, thought Gandalf had not said a word. "I leave tonight."

"And the young prince?"

Thranduil raised his eyebrows. "You are a prying soul, Mithrandir, even by the reckonings of the Istari. Yes, Legolas is staying here. I lost him to Dale once, and when I laid eyes on the dragon killer I knew it would happen again. He can be spared for half a century, if that is how long it takes for the man to die."

"You are not worried for him?"

"I trust him. He is not a child, no matter how he seems to you. He loves his king, and his soldiers. The forest will always be his home."

Gandalf hummed thoughtfully, leaning back until he could see Eärendil's star, sailing on its endless course across the dark sky. "Be careful among the ruins, old friend."

"You think something lingers there?"

"You wouldn't leave so hastily unless something was troubling you."

Thranduil lowered his voice. "The captain of my guard has been sending reports. Her letters came up with the supplies for Dale."

"Tell me."

"She took a wound in Dol Guldur, but she does not recall how or when. Three of her soldiers have disappeared, and two more have been found dead. There is something evil in that place, Mithrandir. I do not doubt you drove the Necromancer from the forest, but perhaps he was not alone."

Gandalf sighed. "The Necromancer is gone. But I am beginning to think that he fled of his own choosing. You were right, I'm afraid. Something did happen this morning."

"When you were waking the boy?"

"Yes. I have been thinking on it for hours, but it eludes me. Whatever _it_ may be."

"It may be him," Thranduil said.

Gandalf did not deny it. The possibility had haunted him since he'd first felt the Necromancer's presence, lingering in a sword that should have been buried with a warlord long dead. Sauron had once commanded a great power over spirits and souls. Sauron, so silver-tongued and beautiful, who had in Valinor been dear as a brother to him.  Was all the might of the White Council enough to drive him from the east?  And if Sauron was gone from Dol Guldur, where now would he go?

"Yes," he said, heavily. "It may yet be him."

The stars shone bright overhead. Clouds drifted over the ragged line of mountains to the north, over the windy heath where Bolg still lurked. But beneath the slopes of the Lonely Mountain, all was still and peaceful.

In a pavilion near the gate, a king and his burglar were curled up together, sound asleep; a golden-haired boy kept watch at his brother's side, struggling to keep his eyes open. Down in the old city of Dale, an elven prince talked quietly with the man who had slain a dragon. And long after the Elvenking left, riding hard for Mirkwood, Gandalf still sat alone in the darkness.

He was thinking of the ring that Bilbo had found, and wondering what sort of creature would call itself Gollum.


	10. All Hail to the Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Included in this chapter: unexpected elves, winter in Dale, a slightly tipsy Bilbo, and Thorin's attempt at the Yuletide spirit. The chapter title comes from Loreena McKennitt's song "In Praise of Christmas."
> 
> "All hail to the days that merit more praise / than all the rest of the year / and welcome the nights that double delights / as well for the poor as the peer."

The mountain passes were closed, but that was of little concern for the two elves who were traveling east over Caradhras, moving quick and fleetfooted over the deep drifts. The snow had been packed hard by the driving winds, and the elves were dressed in layers and warm cloaks, well suited to the foul weather.

Night was approaching. It would soon be the shortest day of the year, and darkness came early. A small hollow in the craggy slopes, not deep enough to be called a cave, assured them that they would at least survive until dawn.

"You start a fire," Elladan said. "I'll keep watch."

Elrohir made a face. "As if it's worth the bother. We haven't caught so much as the scent of a goblin since we left home."

He tugged on one of Elrohir's braids.  "Nevertheless."

Elrohir knelt to the ground and began rummaging through his pack. He had been collecting pine needles and bits of dried bark when they were still below the tree line, and they had brought as much dry wood as they could carry. "Toss me your tinderbox."

Elladan obliged. "Lost yours again, brother?"

"No. It's just buried somewhere at the bottom of all this." He shoved the tangle of clothes, wrapped food, and weapons gear back into his pack.

"You should keep your things more carefully."

Elrohir started packing down snow, making a windbreak for his little pile of firewood. It was labor made rote by endless repetition; his idle thoughts began drifting homeward, to Imladris. "We could be sitting beside father in the halls, in front of a roaring hearth." He chivvied the scattered sparks into a sad little flame. "With Lindir playing his harp and singing all the old midwinter tunes."

"Don't," Elladan said, not turning around. It was an old argument, and he was sick of hearing it.

But Elrohir persisted. "Father would have Estel curled up beside him, and the little lad would be watching everything with those eyes of his, all wide and wondering. He's just a child, for all he thinks he's a warrior." A swirling gust of wind drove snow and flecks of ice into the quiet air underneath the overhang. The flame flickered and went out. "Why did we ever leave home?"

"You know why we left," Elladan said. "What makes this winter different from any other?"

"We didn't have Estel before. He doesn't understand why we do it. The hunting. Why we're gone for months and months at a time. " Elrohir sat back and made a small noise of satisfaction as the wood began to smoke, another small flame cracking amid the careful pile of tinder. This one stubbornly refused to go out. "He wanted to come with us, you know. Wanted to go on an adventure."

"Brave lad," Elladan said. For the first time there was a trace of regret in his voice: sadness, resignation. He stepped further into the shelter of the overhang, toward the warmth of the fire. Elrohir was feeding it branches, piece by broken piece. "Oh, curse it all, you're right," he said. "There's no point in keeping watch. There's not a goblin left in these mountains." He settled down on the ground, wrapping an arm around his brother's shoulders. "What happened to them?"

Elrohir hummed thoughtfully. He was softer than his brother in some ways, quieter and more even-tempered, but he had the greater share of Lord Elrond's foresight. "They left," he said, brushing his fingers against the cold stone of the mountainside. "In great haste, and armed for war. I do not think they will be coming back."

"Good. Though I would have liked the pleasure of killing a few of them myself."

The wind howled, and far down in some bleak rocky valley a warg howled back. Elladan tensed, and then relaxed: only one of the creatures. A warg would not hunt or kill alone. No doubt it too was searching for shelter, or for the pack it had lost.

"I think of her often, this time of year," Elrohir said, a little later. He leaned away from the warmth of the fire, letting his head fall onto Elladan's shoulder. Outside of their little overhang, the darkness was complete. "She loved it so. The singing, and the decorations. The miruvor. Do you remember how she and father used to dance?"

"Why must you speak of such things?"

"I would rather remember her like that," Elrohir said. "Better to think of her dancing then captured in the mountains, alone but for—well."

"And that is the difference between us, for I can think of nothing else," Elladan said.  Indeed, he was thinking of it even as he spoke; his hands tightened against Elrohir's shoulder, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. It was unconsciously done, but Elrohir still reached up and forcibly loosened his grip.

"You're hurting me," he said.

Elladan drew back hastily. "Oh. I didn't mean to."

"You never do. If we want to hunt," Elrohir said, "we must go further east. Across the mountains."

"How far east?"

Elrohir closed his eyes, reached out in some inexpressible way into the earth and air around him. "Hundreds of miles," he said. "To another mountain, standing alone. There will be a great battle there on midsummer's day. I see—" he took a sharp breath, "—I see smoke rising from the slopes, and a town razed to the ground."

"The Lonely Mountain, and Dale of old beneath it. Have the dwarves reclaimed it, then? Is the dragon dead?"

Elrohir opened his eyes. "I do not know. I could see nothing but the smoke. If we wish to hunt, though, that is the place for it. All of Ered Mithrin will be emptied."

Elladan made a noise than sounded halfway to a growl. "Good."

"Father will miss us," Elrohir said. "It is a long journey. We may not come back."

But he already knew that his brother would not care about that. Elladan was not one to fret about their chances of death by the sword in the midst of war. It was capture that he feared, and helplessness, and a long slow fading like Celebrían's—like their mother who had once been laughing and strong, her hair as bright as quicksilver. No matter what Elladan thought, Elrohir remembered all too well the way she had looked when they found her at last in these very mountains.

There was a reason that the sons of Elrond spent their winters hunting goblins.

"So be it," Elladan said, just as Elrohir had known that he would. And then, perhaps still conscious of the small crescent bruises blossoming under the sleeve of Elrohir's tunic, he leaned in once more and said: "Happy Turuhalmë, brother."

Elrohir thought of Estel, and of their father, and the warmth and laughter that would be filling the halls of Imladris. "Happy Turuhalmë," he said, softly.

He watched through all the long night, as his lonely fire burned down to ashes and the darkness closed in. There was no wood left. But they were together, and they would not freeze.

* * *

By dawn there was indeed smoke rising from Dale, as Elrohir had seen in his vision. But for now it was only the ordinary sort, wood smoke curling up from stone and mud chimneys, a good strong scent that lingered in the lungs and promised warmth behind closed doors. Bilbo had grown used to the acrid dusty smell of the coal fires that heated the upper levels of Erebor, and the change was a welcome one. He breathed in deep, and let the chilly air fill his lungs.

More than a month had passed since the battle, and life was settling down into the inevitable routine of survival. The gnawing cold and hunger were endurable only because there was a promised end in sight; spring would come, as sure as anything. The frigid nights would grow shorter, and the thick dark ice that had frozen over the River Running would weaken and melt away.

But until then the lean months loomed bleak and barren in front of them. Consequently, Bilbo spent a great deal of time in the kitchens, and in Thorin's chambers, which were the coziest parts of the mountain; he remembered all too well the miserable days of the Fell Winter, which had almost starved the hobbits out of the Shire when he was little more than child. When he had to venture out, he wore an absurd number of layers, including a thick fur coat that Thorin had thrown at him one day, along with a sharp "Stop shivering, Master Burglar. You make me feel cold every time I look at you."

It had not escaped Bilbo's notice that Thorin spent a great deal of time doing just that. Looking at him, that is, not shivering; Thorin was too dignified to shiver, at least when people might see him. But ever since Dain had returned to the Iron Hills, leaving more than half his army behind, it had become apparent that Thorin spent more time with Bilbo than anyone else in Erebor. Indeed, the depth of the king's favor was so undeniable that even the stodgiest and least welcoming of dwarves had no choice but to reluctantly accept Bilbo into their midst.

For the lords and advisers that had decided to stay in Erebor rather than returning to the Iron Hills with Dain, it was a question of survival, a rule of propinquity. Thorin had neither the time nor the patience to listen to their slew of suggestions, requests, and complaints, but Bilbo did—and Thorin listened to Bilbo as he did no one else. Suddenly, befriending the hobbit was considered a _very_ sensible thing to do. Bilbo tolerated it well enough, though he spent a great deal of time complaining to Thorin, who usually ignored him for a few minutes before telling him, not without some sympathy, to stop whining and go fetch him the Council meeting minutes.

The only time Bilbo was free to do exactly as he pleased, without being run off his feet with work and arguments and meetings and cajoling, was when he went down to Dale to visit Bard. Officially, he was "consulting about the current state of finances and trade between the city of Dale and the sovereign kingdom of Erebor." Bard's fourteenth share of the treasure remained securely within the vaults of Erebor, but his credits and debits were reckoned to the penny every week. The dwarves had decided that it was Bilbo's job to keep him honest.

So once every seven days Bilbo ventured out of Erebor into the cutting wind, appropriated a makeshift sleigh and a team of two ponies, and sat bundled in furs alongside a morose dwarf named Ibur, who had taken it upon himself to make sure that Bilbo didn't freeze to death while he was outside the mountain. Bilbo appreciated the thoughtfulness, but not the conversation.  Ibur so delighted in making dire predictions and offering gloomy suggestions that Dori seemed blithely cheerful by comparison.

"Thank you, Ibur," Bilbo said on that particular morning, just as they arrived at the walls that bounded the town. "I'll be done around mid-afternoon, I should think."

"Take care not to get frostbite," Ibur said, as Bilbo stepped off the sled and straight into an inconvenient snowdrift. "Or murdered. Do you suppose the king would kill me, if I let you get murdered?"

"He would probably be very irritated, yes," said Bilbo. "Have a nice morning, Ibur."

"Don't suppose I will," Ibur said.

At his command, the ponies trudged off, their heads bowed against the wind. Bilbo watched them vanish into the swirling snow, and then turned around and made his way toward the wall. The gates, made of thick wood and reinforced with iron, were crude but sturdily built, and it took two strong men to lift the heavy iron bar and push the gates open against the wind. Bilbo slipped inside.  The gates slammed shut behind him.

"Brisk, innit?" one of the gatekeepers said, breathlessly. "But it's quieter inside. The walls keep the worst of it out. Bard's in the Master's lodge, so I reckon you can wait there until he's done."

The snow wasn't as deep inside the walls, and the walking paths were well-trodden. Passerby waved and said polite good mornings as he passed. Bilbo was quickly becoming one of the most familiar faces in Dale, and Bard liked him, which meant he was regarded with general favor, at least among the soldiers and their families.  Bilbo had quickly learned that it was not very pleasant, having influence only because you had the favor of the titled and powerful. Turning down Lord Varin's perennial requests for better living quarters was easy. Telling a town that a supply caravan bringing a month's worth of provisions had been ambushed by goblins before it reached Erebor was not.

This time, though, Bilbo faced nothing worse on his walk through Dale than a few hopeful women asking him when the next loads of timber from Mirkwood would arrive.

"Soon," he promised them. "In two or three days, if the weather improves and we can keep the roads clear."

No sooner had he arrived at the lodge than Bilbo heard muffled shouting and a chorus of slamming doors. Gaven was lurking under the eaves, smoking a pipe and warming his hands over a brazier. The coals glowed warm and ruddy against the black iron.

Most days, Gaven stuck to Bard's side like a burr to a woolen blanket. Bard sulked and scowled, claiming that he didn't need a bodyguard and that he was perfectly capable of looking after himself, but Gaven cheerfully ignored him. Indeed, he spent a great deal of time at Bard's house, exchanging significant glances with Legolas every time Bard started complaining about fussing mother hens.

"Is something the matter?" Bilbo asked him.

Gaven shrugged. "The usual. They're fighting again."

"Oh, dear." Now that Bilbo was listening for it, he could make out the Master's unmistakable voice, coming from the second story of the lodge. It was a manor house, really, with a high peaked roof and proper shutters and elegant carvings on all the doors. There was even real glass in a few of the windows, and four chimneys with curls of grey smoke drifting up into monotonous winter sky. "Will Bard be down soon, do you suppose?"

"Hard to say. He's in a rotten mood. Got the bit between his teeth, so if the Master's thinking to wear him down, I reckon they'll be locked up there all morning."

"What happened?"

Gaven shrugged again. "According to the gossips, Bard got cornered last night outside the walls. One of them had a knife, and it came from the lodge. The Master don't take much trouble to keep his servants in line." He offered the pipe to Bilbo, who accepted it gratefully.

"Is he all right?"

"Bard? It weren't nothing but some bruises, if that's what you mean. The prince wouldn't let him go haring around if he was hurt any worse. But he's madder than a wildcat, from the sound of it. Can't say as I blame him. Of course, it wouldn't have happened at all if he weren't so damned stubborn."

They smoked in companionable silence for a while. When the cold became unbearable they headed inside, knocking the snow off their boots before they stepped over the threshold. One of the servants—the Master had half a dozen of them—glanced around nervously when Gaven appeared, then hurried outside and whispered something in his ear. He frowned and nodded. "Fair enough," he said. "Thanks, love. I'll pass it along."

Bilbo looked curiously at him, but Gaven pretended not to notice, turning and ducking awkwardly through the doorway. "Dwarven built," he said, aiming a kick at the frame. "Clever bastards. Everything's a little too low. Reckon they did it to punish us for our crimes, and it's working. I'm always knocking my head on the rafters."

Bilbo had heard the same complaint at least a dozen times. He tactfully never mentioned that the dwarven builders had been congratulating themselves over just such an architectural triumph since the first house in Dale had gone up.

Somewhere over the course of his adventures, Bilbo had turned into a shameless eavesdropper; he felt absolutely no guilt in listening intently to the argument upstairs, picking out snatches of muffled dialogue and puzzling over the pieces he couldn't quite hear. As far as he could tell, they were fighting over rationing. That had been one of Bard's less popular decisions, and the Master had backed him only reluctantly, but there was no avoiding it. Stores in Dale and Erebor were running dangerously low, and all the goodwill in the world couldn't keep shipments from Mirkwood and the Iron Hills on schedule.  The weather and the goblins both were conspiring against them.

Sooner rather than later the shouting stopped, and Bard came down the stairs towards them. The scowl on his face was made far worse by a black eye, blossoming into sickly blue and purple, and an impressive set of finger-shaped bruises ringing his neck.

"Don't you look handsome," Gaven drawled. "Had a late night, did you?"

Bard thumped him hard on the shoulder. Gaven yelped, but before he could retaliate, the Master's voice drifted down from the second story: "Bard, my boy, you will make certain you let me look at the account books this week? The supply rosters too, there's a good lad. And tell my manservant to send up my morning drink."

Bard made a strangled noise, like an angry cat. He pointed a passing servant lad in the direction of the stairs, snapped "Brandy!" and stomped out of the lodge, only just remembering to duck as he passed under the doorway. Gaven followed at his side, Bilbo trailing behind them and struggling to keep up with their long strides.

"I hope you haven't been waiting long," Bard said to him, once they were outdoors and had left the lodge long behind. He was making an enormous effort to be civil, if the expression on his face was any indication.  "If I'd known you were here, I would have sent you back to my house.  Sigrid and Bain are out working, but the prince ought to be there."

"It's no trouble," Bilbo said. "Are you certain you're all right?"

Bard touched the swollen skin underneath his black eye and winced. "Yes. Just some poor fool who was sick of going hungry every night. And the Master insists on holding his little feasts, and going through all the rosters and account books at his leisure, as if I can't be trusted to look after so much as a cord of firewood." He took a few deep breaths, struggling to keep his voice even. "Why don't we talk about something else? I'd rather not start shouting again."

Bilbo obligingly began outlining their renegotiated costs of building materials and labor, and then the progress the Council was making on three separate trade agreements, and the commensurate effects of each on the price of the grain being shipped from the Iron Hills.

Bard made vague sounds of agreement to all of it, so Bilbo moved on to the patrol schedule: it had been changed, and changed again, to accommodate the snow-choked winter trade routes. "Dwalin should have the rosters for you early next month," Bilbo said. "And we'll send them out to King Dain and the Elvenking at the same time."

"Good," Bard said. "If we lose next month's supplies—"

"We won't," Bilbo said, with more confidence than he felt. "If any goblins cross the northern borders, we'll have warning of it. Dain is doubling the number of guards, and Thorin is sending soldiers to watch the roads south from the Withered Heath. One of the princes will be with them."

By then they had arrived at Bard's home, a little wooden shanty at the edge of town. A handful of elven runes had been carved over the door.  Wood was stacked on either side, only partially sheltered by the narrow eaves. The clothesline was laden with a strange assortment of clothes, all of them frozen stiff in the snow and wind: Bard's battered tunics and cloaks hung up alongside the children's dresses, and a few garments made of finely-sewn elven cloth.

"We were careless last time," Bard said, swinging the door open and ushering them inside. "If the goblins—"

A chorus of shrieks and laughter interrupted him. Bard stopped in his tracks as two small figures flew out of the house. He caught one, but the other slipped under his arm and fled outside. "Elsie, gods curse it—you little wretch, at least put on a coat!  Tilda, you must look after her," he said.

"Sorry, father," Tilda said, sounding only slightly repentant.  "Hello, Mr. Baggins.  Hello, Gaven."

Legolas appeared in the doorway, the aforementioned coat in his hands.  "I tried," he said, when Bard looked pointedly at him, and then down at Elsie's coat. "She says she doesn't get cold. I suppose she takes after you."

Bard kicked off his boots and shoved them in a corner. "She can't take after me. She's not mine, thank the gods. Come in, both of you," he said. "It'll be crowded, but we can manage."

The house was comfortably warm.  Bilbo shivered in gratitude, brushing the last of the snow off his clothes. A wood stove in the center of the room radiated heat, and a stack of dry logs was piled high beside it.

The main room was large and cheerfully lit, and the walls were sturdy enough to keep even the worst blizzards at bay. It was a simple dwelling, with a packed dirt floor and no furniture to speak of. Three straw mattresses leaned against one wall, and a battered rug was spread out in front of the fireplace. Whittled pegs were set into the walls to hold coats and weapons. By rights, the heir of Lord Girion should have had the finest house of them all, but there were no manservants or iron braziers here. Bilbo had wondered more than once what Bard thought of that.

The Master of Laketown was currently without either a lake or a town, but it seemed that he was still the master.

The place wasn't entirely cheerless.  A few ribbons and sprigs of greenery had been hung up in honor of the holiday, at the children's insistence. Bilbo had helped them decorate last week, and at Glóin's request he had brought a few pretty gems from the mountain as presents. A handful of opals were a petty substitute for the Arkenstone, but the younger girls had never seen anything so precious in their lives.

"They're pretty," Elsie had said, pouring the sparkling little gems from one hand to another. They gleamed, pearlescent, and tiny veins of color blazed as the firelight flickered. "But there aren't any markets. So what are we supposed to use them for?"

"I'll teach you how to play Liar's dice," Bard had promised her, when Bilbo couldn't come up with a satisfactory answer. "And we can use the opals like coin for betting."  She had brightened at that.

But there were no festivities today.  While Bilbo was shedding his wraps and furs, Legolas pulled Bard aside and spoke to him, too quick and soft for Bilbo to follow. Bard looked tired, not angry, but his shoulders stiffed as Legolas spoke.  "It's nothing," Bard said in reply. "He swore that he would take care of it."

Legolas reached out, his fingers gentle on the bruises marring Bard's neck. "This is not 'nothing'.  Elsie wouldn't go to bed until I gave her one of my knives to put under her pillow.  Sigrid won't let Tilda go outdoors alone.  I scarcely need tell you about Bain."

Bard reached up and took the prince's hand in his own,  but Legolas pulled back.  Bard scowled and looked away. "If you must fuss, at least wait until Bilbo leaves," he said, brusque. 

He kept the account books under lock and key, carefully out of sight; he fetched them as Bilbo, busy pretending that he hadn't been seen or heard anything, claimed his usual spot on the threadbare rug. Elsie was still outside.  Tilda had pulled Gaven aside and was laughing with him.  She was of an age to be childish and mature by turns: some days she was every bit as grown-up as her older sister, but today she was busily showing Gaven the toy soldiers that Legolas had given her for a Yuletide present.  

"I didn't know that elves celebrated Yule," Bilbo said, watching as they began setting up for a pitched battle, arguing over who would get the Númenóreans and whether or not there had been dwarves at the siege of Barad-dûr. Evidently someone had been telling them bedtime stories.

Legolas sat down too, his legs curled underneath him. He was thinner than he had been a month ago, and he looked tired and worried, but he smiled a little at Bilbo's confusion. "Yesterday was the first night of an ancient Noldorin festival," he said. "Turuhalmë. My people don't honor it, but it is very much like your Yuletide. The soldiers were mine when I was a child, and I asked my father to send them along with the last reports from Mirkwood. Bard said that the children would like dolls or figurines."

And so he had decided on a set of toy soldiers. Sometimes, but never for long, Bilbo forgot that he was living in a glorified military camp.

"Here," Bard said, reappearing in their midst with his arms full of books and parchment. He thumped the towering stack down on the floor. "Let's get this over with, why don't we?"

They settled down to work while Gaven kept Tilda distracted.  Between the three of them they made short work of the balances; Legolas was clever with numbers and had some experience with the running of towns and kingdoms. Bilbo and Bard spent a frustrating amount of time scribbling out totals and wondering whether straw should count as food or fuel.

When Elsie returned, slipping through the door along with a flurry of snow, she refused to go play. Instead, she sat beside Bard and watched the proceedings with great interest.

"If you say 'according to the Council' one more time, I'm going to throw you out on your ear," Bard said. "We only use it in the stoves when the wood and coal run short. Which it wouldn't, if our convoys could make it across the Desolation without being raided."

"Why does it matter?" Elise asked, peering at the sheets of parchment over Bard's shoulder. "Straw is straw."

"Sensible girl," Bard said, and Elsie edged a little closer to him.

Bilbo thought for a moment about how best to explain the concept of import tariffs, and then decided that it wasn't worth the bother. "Oh, confound it all, you're right. Straw is straw. I'll just mark it down as a necessary good, and tell Thorin not to bother with taxing it."

Lord Varin, he thought with no little satisfaction, could stew to his heart's content over his precious trade legislation. The king's amendment and a three-fourths vote from the Council could rewrite practically any law in the land, and Bilbo had both king and council tucked neatly in his waistcoat pocket.  Which, of course, was precisely what got him in trouble with Lord Varin in the first place.

They worked well into the afternoon.  By the time they had settled the last of the accounts and put the hated stack of parchment back in its lockbox, it was well past time for Bilbo to return to the mountain. He stayed anyway, wheedled into joining Gaven and the children in their game. Somewhere along the long and inordinately complex road to war, the elves and men had taken up residence in Barad-dûr and were busily fortifying it against an unexpected attack by a legion of trolls.

"Like the ones in your story, Mister Bilbo," Elsie said.

"Oh, and King Oropher isn't dead," Tilda informed him. But she was looking at Legolas as she said it, a little anxiously.

Legolas knelt beside her. "I'm glad to hear it," he said. "Now, tell me more about these trolls."

Soon, Tilda and Elsie were arguing about how many men it took to bring down a troll. Bard was dragged in to settle the matter once and for all, and he did, at which point Gaven told them that Bard wouldn't be able to tell a troll from a boulder if one came up and bit him. The debate began all over again. Bilbo, the resident authority on trolls, was so reduced to helpless laughter that he was of no use to either side.

"You should come up to visit sometime," he said to Bard, as he was bundling up to leave. "All of you. We've done a fine job restoring the upper levels, and Bombur has been making mulled wine from the casks that Thranduil sent us. We could have a proper Yuletide celebration."

Bard smiled, a little ruefully. "You're very kind," he said. "And the children would love it. But I don't think Thorin Oakenshield would be too pleased to see me at his gates again.

"Oh, I would talk him into it," Bilbo said. "Just you wait, Master Bowman. One day when you least expect it, a messenger will come from Erebor with a gilded invitation to dine in the royal hall."

Bard shook his head. "Aye, on the same day that Gaven tosses a crown at me and calls me king of Dale. It's a kind thought, Mister Baggins, but Thorin and I will never be friends."

It was probably true, Bilbo thought, as Ibur drove the sleigh back toward the mountain through the white drifting snow. It would have been nice, though, having everyone together for the holidays.  Back in the Shire, Bilbo had regarded his numerous relations as more trouble than they were worth. They were particularly irksome in the wintertime, when all he wanted to do was curl up with a cup of tea and a nice book. But things were different now. For reasons which he didn't quite understand, Bilbo felt nervous every time he looked down at the sturdy walls and little houses of Dale.

Compared to the towering strength of the mountain, he supposed that any town would look small and vulnerable, but not even Bard would bother denying that Dale was indefensible. There were still goblins lurking in the north, though no one knew how many. And there was word from Thranduil that Dol Guldur had not been entirely forsaken. Bilbo was left with a lingering unease and a longing, no matter how impractical, to keep everyone safe in the mountain, sheltered by the strength of steel and stone walls.

It was a worry that Thorin would understand well. Or perhaps that was just it. Perhaps somewhere along the way, he had started shouldering Thorin's worries and burdens as his own.

It was, Bilbo though wryly, probably the only decent Yuletide gift that he could give to the richest king in Arda.

He certainly wouldn't want a set of toy soldiers.

* * *

"I think there's trouble down in Dale," Bilbo told Thorin, late that evening. "Or there will be soon enough. One of these days the Master will push too far, and Bard will lose his temper."

"Given the choice between the two of them, I would back the soldier," Thorin said. He still refused to use Bard's name, if he could avoid it. "But I leave the gambling to Nori."

They were in Thorin's old quarters in the royal wing of the palace, which were once again clean and orderly; the dust and grime of more than a century had been scrubbed away, and some of Thorin's old belongings had even been salvageable.

Thorin had taken to spending his evenings there, meeting informally with his closest advisors. More often than not Bilbo stayed late into the night. Sometimes he did nothing more useful than listen while Thorin dictated formal letters to Ori, or read quietly while Thorin paced back and forth, working through some uncomfortably thorny problem that had come up during a recent Council meeting. More commonly, the evenings turned into informal Council meetings all on their own. Bilbo usually kept quiet. He was hopelessly out of his depth when it came to standing patrols or the structural integrity of the lower levels of the mountain.

Tonight, however, it was only the two of them, and they were doing nothing more productive than sitting in front of the hearth and drinking wine. Thorin claimed it was in somewhat belated honor of Yule, which of course was nonsense—dwarves didn't celebrate it, and only those few that had spent years living among men gave it even the slightest thought. It was far more likely that Thorin had finally given in to Balin's wheedling and agreed to take the evening off.

("You can't be forever working," Balin had said more than once, which Thorin seemed to take a challenge rather than a reminder that even the king of Erebor was, in the end, only mortal.)

At least the wine was excellent. As a whole, dwarves were inclined to ales or spirits, and Thorin wasn't much impressed with the vintage, but it suited Bilbo perfectly. Thranduil had no doubt selected it precisely for that reason. The Elvenking had sent it to Bilbo as a present, and it was better by far than anything that Bilbo had ever stolen from the cellars of his palace; it was a dark red, almost smoky, with hints of plums and blackberries. The scent reminded Bilbo of the infamous oaken wine barrels that he had used to break the dwarves out of Thranduil's dungeons.

"I will never understand," Thorin told him, distastefully, "why you insist on drinking something that tastes like so foul."

For the last few minutes Bilbo had been swirling his glass in an abstracted way, his thoughts still drifting back to Dale. "Yes, quite," he said, paying no attention to what he was saying. He had learned it was usually best to agree with Thorin when he started complaining.  Or at least to nod, and pretend to be politely interested.

Thorin had evidently noticed. "If you want to leave, you need not stay on my account.  I'm sure you can find company more congenial to your tastes."

"What?" Bilbo sorted through the last few moments of their conversation in his mind.  Oh. Something about the wine. "Don't be absurd. You would probably quite like it, if Thranduil hadn't been the one to give it to me."

"Hardly," said Thorin, which Bilbo took to mean that he was entirely right. "If our brews aren't good enough for you, it's no concern of mine."

"And if you're going to be like that, I'll not share any more of it with you. You can go back to drinking that appalling slop that Nori's been selling."

Thorin made a face at that.  He relented with good grace, and took another sip of wine. "Oín is helping him now," he said. "He says that it's his bounden duty to see that Nori doesn't accidentally poison anyone."

Bilbo snorted inelegantly at that, letting the last of his worries slip away. It was rare to see Thorin in such a genial mood, and no good would come of fretting the evening away.  Before he could reply, though, there was a muffled clatter in the hallway outside, followed by a chorus of familiar raised voices and the slamming of a heavy wooden door.

Thorin sighed.

"And there goes Kili," Bilbo said. It had become a familiar scene over the last fortnight, and what followed was equally predictable.

There was a knock on the door, and before Thorin had a chance to say anything, Fili pushed the heavy oaken door open and slipped inside. "I'm sorry to bother you," he said. "Do you mind?"

"Come on in, lad," Thorin said. He poured Fili a glass of wine, which Fili downed in a few quick gulps. "Sit. Did your brother throw you out again?"

"No," Fili said, throwing himself into a battered old armchair by the fire. "We had a fight. He left."

Thorin and Bilbo exchanged a glance; so much for their quiet evening alone. "Do I need to thrash some sense into him?" Thorin asked. "Or will you do that yourself?"

Fili made a small, unhappy noise. "Don't joke," he said. "I can't even imagine hurting him, not when he's so grim and determined to do it himself. Why can't you order him not to go out on patrol?"

"And leave him to rage and storm until he finally draws his sword on someone?" Thorin shook his head. "His body is as healed as it ever will be, though I cannot understand how. If I order him to stay in the mountain, he will not obey me. When he disobeys I will be obligated to punish him, and he will hate me for it."

It was true. Once Gandalf had stirred him from his sleep, Kili was on his feet so quickly that Oín declared the lad blessed by Mahal. Just like his uncle, the dwarves of the mountain said, nodding sagely amongst themselves. A true heir of Durin. Not even Azog the Defiler and all the orcs of Gundabad could bring down Thorin Oakenshield, and his youngest sister-son was alike to him in more than mere looks.  Kili might have been half dead and missing a hand, but he threw himself into the rebuilding of Erebor with a determination that bordered on violence. He sparred with anyone who would take the time to fight him, and drilled until he collapsed in exhaustion.

In deference to Thorin, no one ever pointed out that Fili had never quite recovered from his own injuries, modest though they had been in comparison to Kili's. Thorin wouldn't discuss it, and dismissed the tentative suggestions that there was something wrong with the crown prince: that his lingering pallor and exhaustion were even slightly out of the ordinary. "We are all of us tired," he would say, coldly. "Fili does his duties and more." 

And no one, not even Bilbo, dared to press him about it.

"He's going to get himself killed," Fili said. "Uncle, he's half-mad. I've never seen him so angry before. It's almost cruel, the way he uses himself."

The banked fire crackled, casting flickering shadows against the smooth arches of stone. "Did your mother ever tell you about the time that Frerin broke both his arms at once?" Thorin said, after a long pause.

"Both?" Fili echoed. "That sounds—well, that sounds awful."

"Yes," Thorin said. "At the time, those were the most miserable months of my life. They were certainly the most miserable months of _his_ life.  He couldn't do anything on his own, and he wouldn't let the servants touch him.  Your mother and I were stuck with his foul temper until he healed."

"What happened?"

"The formations on the south side were unstable.  We didn't know it at the time. Grandfather wanted tunnels spreading out across the plains, to make travel up from Dale easier in the wintertime. Frerin was down with the surveyors when the excavations collapsed."

"How did he escape?" Bilbo was too curious to bother with polite restraint. Thorin, unlike the rest of the dwarves, almost never spoke of his family or his life before the journey to Erebor.  Bilbo had never even heard him mention Frerin's name before.  If it weren't for Balin's love of history lessons, Bilbo wouldn't know anything about Thorin's life before he came knocking at the door of Bag End.

"I found him," Thorin said. "He knew that I would."

"Was he terribly angry?" Fili asked. "About being rescued, I mean."

Bilbo frowned: surely anyone would be grateful to be saved from such a wretched death.  But Thorin looked as if he understood . "Sometimes," he said.  "But he mended, eventually."

"I wish I'd known him," Fili said, a little wistfully.  "It would have been nice, having another uncle."

Thorin hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Would you like to hear another story?"

Fili almost dropped his wineglass. "You mean it?"

"I wouldn't have offered if I didn't," Thorin said.  "Our burglar ought to have a few tales of the family he restored to its kingdom, don't you think?"

Bilbo swallowed. "I would like that very much," he said, his voice soft with something like reverence. "If you don't mind."

True to his word, Thorin told them stories of Erebor in the bright afternoon of its glory, when their trade stretched from Far Harad to the distant western Havens of the elves, and the word of a dwarf of the mountain was as good as gold in all the courts and markets of Arda. They were more like fairy tales than family history, and Bilbo wondered if many years ago, perhaps in this very room, Thrór had told his young grandson these same tales. They were bedtime stories fit for a prince of Erebor, and sometime after midnight Fili fell asleep listening to Thorin's deep baritone voice. Thorin carried on for a few minutes, watching his nephew fondly.

"They called our mountain the watchtower of the north," he finished at last, "as great as Amon Sûl when the kings of Arnor still held strong. Long after Eregion was lost, and the king of Arthedain fell to Angmar's trickery, the dwarves of Erebor stood strong and proud, and bowed before no lords but their own." Then he fell silent for a moment, and shook his head. "I feel like a court jester," he said. "Those words belong to my grandfather, not to me."

"No," Bilbo said, not yet free from the spell of Thorin's voice. So close to the hearth, the room was drowsily warm, and the wine was making him lightheaded. "You do them honor. I feel like I could march into battle against all the goblins in the world."

"I thought you already had."

Bilbo flushed. "Yes, well. There was nothing heroic about it, really. Surely you know it was all for you."

Thorin looked at Bilbo with such affection that Bilbo had to resist the temptation to do something appallingly Tookish and inappropriate.

"Shouldn't you wake Fili?" he said, hastily. "We have a Council meeting tomorrow morning, after all."

"All the more reason to let him sleep. If I sent him back to his rooms, he would only wait up until Kili came back."

"Yes, well. I should leave, at any rate. It's been a long day. Busy." Bilbo almost tripped over his own feet as he stood. Surely he hadn't had that much to drink!

"As you like," Thorin said.  Bilbo had the vague sense that he was being made fun of. "Happy Yule, Bilbo."

"Happy Yule," Bilbo said, and fled the scene before he said something unforgivable. Only much later, when he was curled up in his own bed and trying without much success to calm his racing thoughts, did he realize that Thorin had called him by his given name.

It was, to his recollection, the first time in the entirety of their acquaintance.


	11. Khahûl

Thorin woke in the early hours of the morning. The royal quarters of the palace were deep within the mountain, but that made no difference to one of Durin's folk; he knew the moment he opened his eyes that the sun was still well below the horizon. He also knew that it was useless to lie abed and wait for sleep to return, so with a small grunt he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up.  The muscles in his chest twinged.

The fire had burned down to ashes and glowing embers.  His breath misted in the quiet air as he knelt by the hearth, adding dry wood piece by piece until the small flame was rekindled. It wasn't necessary, strictly speaking. Surrounded by hundreds of feet of stone and earth on all sides, his folk would never freeze as long as they kept safe in the mountain.  But while the road from Mirkwood was passable, heat was one of the few luxuries they could afford to enjoy, and Bilbo often dropped by with absolutely no excuse besides wanting someplace cozy and quiet to spend the evening.  Thorin kept his quarters just as warm as the hobbit liked.

His knees ached as he struggled back to his feet. Had Thrór spent so many evenings hunched over at his desk in dim candlelight, squinting at sheaves of parchment?  There was too much to be done—too many plans to be made, too much of a king's work that he had forgotten or never learned. It was no small thing to blow the dust off of an entire kingdom and start anew.  As a young dwarf he might have been equal to the task, but in the privacy of his own mind, Thorin would confess that he was teetering on the brink of old age.

 _Worn down before our time_ , Dís always said, the corners of her eyes crinkling, whenever Thorin grumbled about aching back or the splintering pains that shot through his hands. _We'll be greybeards soon enough, doddering around Arda with our packs slung over our_ _shoulders_.  

Fíli was still asleep, uncomfortably curled up in the chair closest to the fire.  Kíli, wherever he had slipped off to, was no doubt awake and restless already.; he was leaving at midday to escort the supply caravan from the Iron Hills back to Erebor. Thorin had promised to send soldiers this time, and Kíli had volunteered to lead them. It would be hard, thankless work. The northeastern roads were ill-maintained, and if another caravan was lost to storms or goblins, then the folk of Dale would starve.

Thorin was loath to wake him, but soon Fíli stirred of his own accord. "Uncle? Is it time?"

"No," Thorin said. "It isn't yet dawn. Take a few more hours of rest."

But Fíli always took less than he was given. Soon he was up, too, pale and shivering in the quiet chill. His mother would scarcely recognize him. But he defied pity—only staggered a little, lightheaded, and smiled ruefully when he caught Thorin watching.  "Perhaps Kíli stole my strength, like he used to steal my blankets," he said, steadying himself against the arm of the chair.

"I would not put it past him." And then, pardoning himself because he was a worried old uncle, after all, and a king besides, Thorin said: "But you have been looking after yourself?"

Fíli's small grin vanished. "Uncle, I swear. It was only when Kíli was so poorly. I haven't been—I haven't. Not for years."

"Ah. Well. You needn't explain." Thorin cleared his throat, not quite looking at Fíli. "It's just as well that you're awake.  Glóin's been pestering me to talk over allocations. Come along. You should know something of our finances."

"I had hoped—"

"I know. But I want you with me today." Thorin might not entirely understand his eldest, but he remembered what it was like to be a worried older brother. Left on his own, Fíli would only fret away the hours until Kíli left; there was nothing better for him than keeping busy.  When it was clear that he would not be swayed, Fíli abandoned his protests, and after a meager breakfast they made their way down to Glóin's new quarters.

Glóin and Óin stayed in rooms just above the great hall, close enough to the treasury that they could keep an eye on things. Glóin delighted in his new position. He had spent years in Ered Luin scrounging together the money to fund and outfit their journey east.  Now, given the almost untouched wealth of Erebor, he could reckon enormous outlays of capital as mere pocket change. Still, the habits of a century didn't vanish in a few months, or even a few years; he was as jealous a guardian for the treasury as any dragon, and he kept careful track of every coin.

On this particular morning, he harangued Thorin fore more than an hour on the state of their imports and exports—"shoddy organization, useless records, receipts no better than chicken-scratch; makes balancing the books a damnable fussing affair—" in a voice booming with authority. Thorin sat and listened as patiently as he could. For a while, he amused himself by watching the shifting expressions on Fíli's face, from genuine concern to bafflement to polite disinterest, and at last to a wooden resignation that Thorin was all too familiar with. Thorin had been attending his grandfather's Council meetings when he was less than half Fíli's age; his strongest memories of those days were of stultifying boredom.

"—told him a hundred times that he needs to send his requests to me first, and only to the quartermaster once I approve them, but the oaf only ever nods and says 'yes, of course, Glóin,' in that lunkish way he has, and then ambles off and forgets _again—_ "

Fortunately, rescue came before Thorin lost his temper and mortally offended an old and loyal friend. "Sorry to interrupt," Bilbo said, sticking his head into the room. "Just needed to pop by and ask you something. I don't suppose you can spare a moment?" And then, as if he had only just noticed their presence, he looked over at Thorin and Fíli. "Oh, but you're meeting with the king. I beg your pardon."

"It's no trouble," Thorin said, magnanimously. "We were almost finished." He stood, and Fíli hastily followed suit. "If the matter is urgent, of course you may interrupt."

"Well, we do need to sort some things out straightaway," said Bilbo. "Wouldn't you say, Glóin?"

Glóin certainly wasn't willing to admit ignorance in front of Thorin, not after he had spent the last hour lambasting everyone from his assistants to Thorin himself for hopeless ignorance on all matters financial. He had no choice but to agree, and when he wasn't looking Bilbo shot Thorin a mischievous grin.

"You see, I've mucked up Varin's pet taxation scheme again, and it's only a detail but he's going to sulk like anything. You know how he is—"

Glóin muttered several unflattering things, none of which he would have repeated were Varin or Balin within earshot.

"Yes, precisely," Bilbo said. "And I was thinking, if we—" his voice faded as Thorin ushered Fíli out of the room and shut the heavy old door firmly behind him.

"Mahal,” said Fíli with some vehemence after they made good their escape down the hall. "What does he expect you to do about any of that? It's Council business, or Treasury."

"It was the same in Ered Luin, the first few years. You remember." Dis had ruled Ered Luin when Thorin was still drifting across the towns and villages of Eregion, collecting as many of his scattered people as he could.  She was the one who had the genius for organization, who could take the endless mess of peacetime and turn it into something that made sense.

"Well, yes. But this is Erebor," Fíli said. "I thought things would be different here." Then he paused, and added, "Which is absurd, isn't it? As if things would sort themselves out just because we're home at last."

"You and I are so alike," Thorin said.  It gave him no small joy to hear Fíli speak so easily of Erebor as home. "Raised as you were, you could scarcely help it.  But we will manage well enough until your mother arrives, and then she can sort us all out."

"And here I had thought you already well-sorted." Fíli cast a significant look back over his shoulder, where Bilbo was no doubt busily coaxing Glóin into a better humor.

"Don't be pert," Thorin said, but without much heat in his voice. "And don't dawdle. We've the duty rosters to go over before the patrol leaves, else Dwalin will thunder at me about royal inefficiency."

They managed the duty rosters and a dozen more petty tasks after that.  The work kept Fíli so busy that he scarcely noticed the passing of time, and Thorin had to drag him out of the accounts at midday to see Kíli's patrol off.  "All well?" Thorin said, when Fíli swayed to his feet, unsteady.

Fíli nodded. His face was tight and pained.  "Only a headache."

"It's the close work.  The strain on your eyes, no doubt.  All this cursed scribbling." Thorin didn't know if he was trying to reassure Fíli or himself, but he slowed his usual brisk stride as they made their way down to the front gate, and they arrived as Dwalin and his soldiers were readying the last of the gear.

Thorin pulled Dwalin aside.  "Watch yourself," he said, low.  "We have lost too much on the roads already: more than the winter can account for. The goblins are not stealing our food. They are hunting us, even now."

"Have I ever let you down?" Dwalin slung a heavy pack over his back. It clattered against his armor and his battleaxe. "Don't fret. I'll bring those supplies safe home to you, and your lad as well."

Nearby, Fíli had pulled his brother out of the milling crowd of soldiers. "Look after youself," he said, hugging Kíli tight. "And keep that mithril shirt on, you hear?"

"I may be a cripple, but I can still dress myself." Kíli yanked himself out of the embrace. 

Fíli let him go. Neither of them wanted a fight, but somehow they had forgotten how to speak without shouting.  _It does no good to press_ , Thorin had told him when they were children.  Even back then, Kíli had a penchant for running off, and Fíli was forever chasing after him.   _You must learn to do without him_.  "If you come across any orcs," Fíli said aloud, "kill some of them for me, will you?"

Kíli nodded. "All of them for you," he said.  And then Dwalin sounded a short blast on his horn, and the gates opened, and they were gone: out into the bright snow-covered world beyond the stone walls of the mountain, where Fíli couldn't follow.

The days dragged their heels after that, though the mountain stirred and clanked with activity.  The soldiers on surveying duty were rediscovering entire little towns carved deep in the mountain, and the diggers were opening up roads and passageways that had been buried for more than half a century.  Everywhere, they found the remains of families who had once lived there, and of soldiers who had died at their posts, or been trapped deep in the mountain until at last the dragon starved them out.

Whenever Thorin could spare a few hours from administration—"the glory of my kingdom," he said, "the heir of Durin, and Mister Baggins comes with another stack of paper for me to sign"—he indulged himself by dragging Fíli hither and yon around their homeland.  "You could walk for weeks," Fíli said, wondering, on one of their rambles. (Thorin had dim memories of an amythest geode that he had once found, large enough that as a skinny young dwarven lad he could climb inside. He had taken it into his head that he and Fíli would rediscover it.)

"Months," Thorin said, walking ahead of him.  "My grandmother once told me that when Erebor was still only a settlement, goblins came down from Ered Mithrim and raided the mountain. The dwarves had warning: they gathered what they needed and slipped down into the caverns. They led the raiding party on a merry hunt, deeper and deeper underground, until the goblins were half-mad with hunger and utterly lost. They saved the settlement with not a drop of dwarvish blood spilled."

Fíli shivered. He had a respectable share of stone-sense, and he never used to worry about losing himself in Ered Luin. But there was something unnerving about the cities beneath Erebor. They went on forever, still and lifeless, endless roads and empty houses. But for the two of them, there wasn't another living soul for miles.

Or none that they knew of, at least.

"It's so still," Fíli said.  They were standing at the end of a row of abandoned houses, shadows leaping against the old stone walls. He traced the strong lines of some ancient family's name, the runes thick with dust. "But they will come back. Some of them, at least." He glanced back at Thorin, flashing him a quick smile. His skin was sallow under the torchlight, but if he was tired he did not complain. "We're a stubborn folk."

"By midsummer, the word will be all across Arda that the dragon is dead and Erebor reclaimed," Thorin said. His voice was quiet, even reverent, but in the utter silence of the  caverns the words echoed against stone. "Our people will know that we kept our word. They will come home."

Whenever they emerged from the silent world beneath the mountain, even the meagre habitation of the main floors seemed bustling by comparison, and Thorin threw himself into his work with new vigor.  Soon the Council had passed a provisional code of law, and approved the drawing of juries by lot. Military law gave way to a provisional civilian code. Varin continued to squabble over the taxes they levied on Dale, which Thorin quietly appreciated; listening to Bilbo argue his way through meetings was delightful. When he was particularly worked up, his cheeks reddened and his curls went every which way.  He was so wickedly sharp-tongued that it took all of Thorin's iron will to keep from chuckling, even in the midst of serious debates. Fíli, who lacked his uncle's rigid self-restraint, sometimes had to excuse himself from the room.

"I am so glad to know that I entertain you," Bilbo said when Thorin tried to explain away his nephew's behavior after one such meeting. "You could occasionally back me during these things, you know."

"I could," Thorin agreed, not quite disguising his small smile. "But think how wounded Lord Varin would feel at such a show of royal disfavor."

"You've picked a fine time to rediscover your sense of humor," Bilbo said, and flounced off to what remained of the libraries to harass Ori about the classical roots of dwarven commerce laws.

In fact, Thorin suspected that Varin had long since ceased to cause trouble for the sake of it. More often than not, he let Bilbo have his way in the end, and it was impossible to believe that a clever old politician like Varin was being so regularly trounced by a gentlehobbit from the Shire. When Thorin asked Balin what mischief his cousin was plotting, Balin refused to answer.

"What sort of dwarf betrays his kinsman's secrets?" he said. "Ask Varin yourself, if you must know."

Thorin scowled, and Balin relented slightly. "Well, I will say this: our Mister Baggins is a quick learner, and he's not the only one. Did you know that Bombur and Glóin have been drafting a plan for training court scribes and making appointments?"

Thorin hadn't, but he certainly approved. "The library keeps Ori busy these days, and since they cannot do the work themselves—"

"They decided that inventing a civil service was the best way to go about it."

When Balin put it that way, Thorin realized exactly how extraordinary such a thing was, and he felt an unexpected burst of pride for his dwarves—and for Varin, who in his own contrary way was bullying them all into competence. There was nothing like a good fight for bringing dwarves together, after all.

* * *

One of Dwalin's mittens was unraveling. Whenever he sat still he worried at the fraying yarn, twisting it around his fingers and tugging at it absently. Then he would curse and get back to his feet, pacing the edges of the campsite. Kíli, for lack of anything better to do, had been watching the slow demise of the unfortunate mitten ever since they left Erebor.

When Dwalin felt restless it usually meant that someone was about to get killed, but if there were goblins lurking nearby they were lying low, at least for now.

In fact, in the five days since Kíli and Dwalin had led their soldiers north, they had seen absolutely nothing of interest. They were stuck on a barren and miserable patch of ground, waiting to meet a well-guarded supply caravan from the Iron Hills and escort it back to Erebor. But neither their supplies nor the dwarves had made an appearance, and now they were three days overdue.

The ragged edges of Ered Mithrin were as inhospitable as the Desolation, and far colder. The uneven ground was dotted with thin naked trees, leafless and shivering in the wind. In the distance, a broken wall of mountains stabbed up above the horizon, stone and sky both colorless.  Weathered piles of stones, the remains of the ancient fortification that had once guarded the old road north, were their only shelter.  Even the dwarves were strangely faded, huddled between the boulders to shelter themselves from the wind. Their faces, red and chafed, were the only spots of color to be seen. For a man, the cold would have been almost unendurable.  For the dwarves it meant stiff fingers and a constant string of complaints. 

No goblins, no caravan, and nothing to do except to watch Dwalin stomp around, ruining Ori's knitting.  Kíli, sitting on the other side of the camp, watched as Dwalin stood up and ambled over to warm his hands by the embers of the fire. A few other soldiers shifted to make room for him. 

"That's a fine scarf you have there," one of them said. She was recognizable by her gravelly voice, and the raised, knotted line of scar tissue that cut across her neck. "And matching mittens, too. I never took you for a soft touch."

She reached out to tug at the frayed, dirty edge of the scarf. Dwalin slapped her hand away. "Shut it, Isda."

"No, I mean it. You could retire." She glanced sideways at Kíli, the corners of her eyes crinkling. Her teeth were bared in a friendly grin. "Take up nursemaiding."

"Mind your tongue," Dwalin growled, but she only laughed.

Kíli flushed with anger and humiliation, but did his best to pretend he hadn't heard the exchange.  It seemed he was always angry of late. At Thorin, at Fíli—at everyone. He couldn't help it. One wrong word, one glance at his ruined arm, and he was hot with rage. It roiled in his stomach every time he reached out for something only to realize that he had no hand to grasp with, no fingers to draw a bow. What good was an archer who couldn't shoot; a blacksmith who couldn't use hammer and tongs?  Thorin had only let him go out on patrol because Dwalin would be there to protect him. But Kíli did not want to be indulged. He wanted real work. He wanted to _fight_. It was the only thing he had ever been good for. Thorin was a king and Fíli was his heir. They were precious; irreplaceable. It fell to Kíli, more than anyone else—even Dwalin—to make sure that Durin's folk never had to without them.

When Kíli was a child, he had fought dozens of losing battles against the men who insulted his family. A dwarven blacksmith could find his tools in the hands of the thief who stole them, but if he complained he was trying to steal from his betters, and if he fought the man he would be whipped for stirring up trouble. The first time Kíli had seen his uncle tied to a post in a town square, his back torn and bloody, something had shifted inside him. Rage was a broken bone pressing through flesh; rage was a little boy who watched one man hold his brother down while another hit him over and over. It was seeing his mother spat on in the streets. It was smiling up at the men who threw coins at him when he begged for food, and keeping silent when they asked how his mother had tricked an unlucky man into her bed—for surely, slim and beardless as he was, he must be a bastard and a whoreson.

When they settled in the Blue Mountains, everything changed. Folk looked up to Dís, and spoke Thorin's name with reverence. The dwarves of Ered Luin had food aplenty, and never wanted for shelter or honest work. They were their own masters. But Kíli had never quite forgotten the ugly hatred of his childhood.  Ever since Gandalf woke him after the battle, it seemed he could not escape it. 

In the first weeks since the battle, he'd found ways to cope.  Sparring helped.  Arguing with Fíli helped, or at least it gave him something different to be miserable about.  Most of all, though, his letters helped.  He'd brought Tauriel's letters along on patrol, but he only dared to look at them when the fires were burning low and most of the other soldiers were abed. Her handwriting was unmistakably elvish; he would be the gossip of the camp if they caught him pouring over her words, tracing the sweeping lines of script. His own missives were barely legible. Writing with his left hand ached; his fingers refused to obey him. 

The first blizzards of winter closed the roads and made their communication sporadic at best, but he treasured everything she sent.  And she had been wounded, too, soon after her return to Mirkwood: when he wrote that some days he wanted to tear off his own skin, she replied, _yes, and how damnable that there are such prisons! It is only a little consolation, when we are all of us locked in our own rooms, that we can talk to each other through the walls._

Dwalin had left his place near the campfire and was squinting at the featureless grey hills in this distance. "Heads up," he said, scattering the unhappy fog of Kíli's thoughts. The soldiers broke off their conversations, and the low murmur of the camp immediately stilled to silence.

"I see it," Kíli said, as he clambered onto the old wall to gain a little height. There was a flurry of snow amid the hills.  It might have been a gust of wind, but from his vantage point Kíli could see the glint of metal against the snow. "They're armed," he said. "Thirty, maybe more, and—" he stared hard. The strange gray light was sharp and painful in his eyes. "Wagons. It's the caravan."

"Took their own sweet time about it," Isda said, amid the general murmur of relief. "A few orcs at their heels might've done them good."

Soon all the soldiers were on their feet, brushing snow and ice off their boots and clothes, clearing out the campsite, and shouldering their packs. Their spirits had lifted.  A rush of conversation made the air lighter, the low sky less oppressive. "I say we get a ride back in the wagons," one of them joked. "Put our feet up."

"We'll knock some notion of speed into them, lazy sluggards," said another.  "And I thought ordinary patrols were dull!"

"Not one curst goblin since we left Erebor.  Might as well've stayed at home."

"Keep quiet," said Kíli, sharply. He was scanning the surround, trusting that there were already plenty of eyes fixed on the caravan. He could see nothing out of place, hear nothing that raised his hackles. But that didn't matter.  Not when Dwalin, with his nose for danger, had been restless all morning. 

They were within shouting distance of Dain's soldiers when he saw the raiding party: goblins, loping down the snowy heights of the northern hills. Isda spotted them at almost the same time, and she didn't bother waiting for orders.

"Weapons out, and mind your heads!"  Horns echoed against the cliffs. The caravan had seen them, too.

The goblins had been waiting for the caravan just like the dwarves, Kíli realized: hiding on the other side of the hills, in the impassible stone gulleys and caves that ringed the heath.  If they had any archers, they would have fired from the safety of the heights.  Instead they were streaming down from the cliffs in ragged lines, circling around and cutting behind the caravan's wagons. They would reach it before Kíli's soldiers did, and his own archers were useless; they couldn't shoot lest they hit their allies by mistake.

"The caravan'll keep moving, if they have any sense," Dwalin said to Kíli. "Looks as if they've no rear guard. Useless sods."

Kíli thought fast. How many times had he played this game as a child? You're leading a score of hardened veterans, he told himself. The voice in his head was Thorin's. A caravan to protect, heavily-laden over broken terrain. Goblins coming up behind—how many? You don't know. No archers, and you can't use yours.  Think quickly, nephew—they'll be on you soon.

Shrieks and howls cut through the air. The enemy was closing the gap, and quickly. The caravan was picking up speed, the horses more terrified than their masters.  The wagons were heavily laden.  If they went too fast they risked overturning or losing a wheel, and then they would be done for.

"We split up," Kíli said, before he had a chance to second-guess himself. "Archers to the rear, behind whatever cover you can find. If the goblins get beyond us, keep them bottled up. This is the only ground flat enough for the caravan. They'll have to come past us.  Dwalin, take eight and keep to one side, behind the old stone walls. Isda, you and the rest and stay with me."

Dwalin moved first, stacking the tumbledown stones on top of each other to make for better cover. "Those were orders," he growled, and suddenly everyone was scrambling to obey.

It was agony to watch and do nothing as the goblins drew nearer and nearer to their prey. Kíli kept low to the ground, sword drawn. His breath came high and ragged in his lungs. What if he'd made the wrong decision? What if the caravan was overtaken before it reached them? A handful of goblins had leap onto the rearmost wagon. He itched to put an arrow to the string. This close, he could have sent one tumbling to the dirt with a bolt through its eye.

Isda nudged him with her elbow. "It's only goblins, lad. The scrawny underfed sort. And here I was, thinking you were the boy who faced down Azog."

Kíli gritted his teeth and said nothing. _Cold ground a body in the dirt crawling toward Thorin uncle you're not dead the pain oh Mahal please make it stop Thorin breathe breathe breathe you're not dead—_

Closer, closer. The road compressed like a spring beneath unendurable strain. The caravan was closing the distance, but the goblins were already upon them.

Then they were through, a dozen wagons ratting by in a cacophony of iron and straining wood, horses flecked with sweat. The goblins shrieked. Some were clinging to the wagons, and at least a score more were crowded behind, like a pack of wolves harrying and snapping at their prey.

"Now!" Dwalin shouted.

His soldiers broke cover. Kíli lunged over the low wall at one of the goblins. By the time it realized what was happening, its intestines were spilling onto the ground, and Kíli was halfway across the battered road.

Sudden movement out of the corner of his eye, and he raised his sword just in time to meet his enemy's. The force of the blow jarred him. He shifted his grip, automatically reaching up to take his sword hilt in both hands, and cursed when he realized what he had done. It was enough to throw him off balance.  The goblin drove him back, first one step and then another, so close that its breath was hot on his face.  He was being pushed into the bottleneck, where the fighting was thickest. In the heavy press of bodies, all scrambling and straining, someone—friend or enemy, Kíli didn't know—dealt him an accidental blow. The blade scraped across his hipbone and bit deep into his thigh, just beneath his mithril mail.

He reeled, hitting the ground as his leg gave out. The goblin fell too landing heavily on top of him.  Kíli's head slammed into the frozen ground, and blinding pain flowered behind his eyes. He gasped for breath.  

But his opponent was equally distracted.  The goblin's sword clattered to the ground as it clawed at its own chest.  Kíli's thoughts were sluggish, his sight fragmented.  But he saw now that there was something lashed to the goblin's side, weighing it down. A sack, barely more than a handful of dirty rags stitched together, and Kíli realized with dawning horror that something inside was _wriggling_.

Whatever the little creature was, it was struggling mightily in protest, clawing and snapping. One of its blows caught flesh. The goblin shrieked in pain.

Kíli's blood was softening the dirt beneath him, turning the ground to mud. Darkness crawled up the edges of his vision. But he forced air into his lungs and ordered his arms to move, and suddenly he had all the strength he needed.  He lunged in and drove his sword up into the goblin's weak side, blade slipping just beneath the jutting ribcage.

The goblin gasped, a high ratting sound. Then it slumped forward, dead.  Whatever was in the bundle began to howl.

By the time Kíli had pulled his sword free and wriggled out from under the weight of the corpse, most of the surviving goblins had already turned and run, unwilling to face such bloody opposition with their prize already lost. Kíli dragged himself to his feet, but there was little for him to do. One of Isda's comrades had just killed the last of the goblins in the bottleneck, and the archers were picking off those that had fled.

The caravan, less than a hundred feet up the road, had come to a halt: the lead wagon was hopelessly askew, rear axle broken. The ground between Kíli's soldiers and the caravan was littered with corpses. Some were dwarven, but now many.

"You all right, lad?" Dwalin was leaning heavily on the broken handle of his axe, but he was only winded, not hurt.

"Yes," Kíli managed, but when he tried to put weight on his injured leg he fell to the ground again. "Its nothing!" he said, when not one but a handful of his soldiers rushed to help. "Just let me—"

"You stay put," Dwalin said, harshly.

Kíli had been raised to obey without question when Dwalin used that particular tone of voice. He stilled, and didn't protest as Dwalin checked his injuries. "How many dead?"

"Four," Isda reported. One of Dain's guards was leaning heavily on her shoulder, and there was enough resemblance that Kíli suspected they were family. "A handful wounded. Not bad."

"Cloth and clean water," Dwalin said, sitting back. Kíli's trousers were a lost cause; Dwalin had simply cut through them, pulling back the bloodstained cloth to reveal an ugly wound, the skin gaping open. Kíli could see dirt and flecks of rust in the gash. But blood was only welling up, not spurting, and some of the urgency had faded from Dwalin's voice when he said: "And at least your head is still attached. Your uncle won't go executing me just yet. Nothing cracked or broken?"

Kíli shook his head, then winced at his mistake. "No," he said. "I don't think so."

It wasn't a satisfactory answer, but Kíli would tolerate only so much fussing. There was still plenty of work to be done, and his burst of sudden strength had not yet left him. He rattled off orders while Dwalin bandaged his thigh, thinking only of what Thorin would have done, were he the one in command.

"You've fine timing, prince," said the dwarf in charge of the caravan, who had hastened back down the road to meet them. Some of his soldiers were looking after their wounded fellows. Others were busy repairing the wagons, or soothing the panicked horses. "And our thanks." He nudged a goblin corpse with the toe of his heavy boot. "There's another little gang of them, up closer to the Heath—harried us for days, had us turning back twice. No sooner did they slink back to their holes than this lot appeared."

"How did your people fare?" Kíli asked as Dwalin helped him back to his feet. He gingerly tested his wounded leg. "If you need anything—"

"It's we who ought to be offering," the captain said, and glanced back at the wagons. "We've been dragging your property halfway across the north, bought and paid for. I'll be grateful to see it safe in Erebor and put to good use."

Kíli thought of his brother, and of Bilbo saying a polite "no thank you" when Bombur offered him another bowl of gruel, though his cheeks were hollow and his tattered waistcoat hung loose when he wore it. He thought of Dale, and the children that Glóin felt so responsible for, and the hunger that drove good men to steal from their fellows.

"It will be," he said.

The captain looked as if he understood.

He left Isda to help sort out the wagons, and told Dwalin to see that they were ready to break camp and leave as soon as the caravan got moving. That dealt with, he limped back down the road to the body of the goblin he had slain, ignoring Dwalin's order to "keep off that leg, you stupid boy, else you want a limp like Ori's."

Yes, that's what I need, Kíli thought, bitterly, as he walked. A useless leg to match his missing hand. Thorin had been right. He should never have gone out on patrol. How was he supposed to defend Erebor, to keep Fíli and Thorin safe, if he couldn't even keep himself in one piece during a skirmish?

At last he found what he was looking for. His curiosity had been nagging him since the battle: what, in Mahal's name, had that goblin been carrying in that sack? Kneeling down was no easy feat, but he managed it nevertheless. He pushed the corpse aside and cut the lashings that the goblin had used to hold the mysterious bundle of rags. Whatever kind of creature was inside, it had fallen still and silent, but Kíli was still wary, his movements quick.

"Ah," he said, when he had cautiously unwrapped the rags. The bundle of matted fur curled inside flinched back from his hand. "You were to be someone's dinner, is that it?"

The pup whined and cringed. Kíli had seen enough of wolves and wargs to know the difference, and this poor little fellow was a wolf: half-starved, surely not more than three months old. "Oh, my uncle will hate you," he told the pup, keeping his voice low and gentle. He had kept dogs in Ered Luin, and missed them dreadfully on the quest. "And you're no village cur that I can tame and keep. Your mother is already dead, I suppose. Your brothers and sisters too. I ought to kill you now, and spare you the trouble of freezing or starving or being eaten."

It was senseless to hate the dead goblin for what it had done to an animal, but Kíli's jaw was tight with anger as he scooped up his new charge and slowly, awkwardly, got to his feet. He half-expected the sting of claws and teeth; instead, the pup whimpered and buried its damp little nose in the crook of Kíli's elbow. Some of Kíli's anger faded.

"My uncle will hate you," Kíli said again as they headed for the caravan. "No doubt you'll be dead in a week, so it's no good giving you a name. You must be plain old khahûl."

He wouldn't grow too fond of the creature, Kíli told himself. But Erebor was large enough that such a small pup would be no trouble at all. If it survived the first few days, then—well, he would think about that when the time came.

It might be nice, he thought, having something to look after.


	12. The Last Cruel Winter

Fíli scrambled up the last few feet to the top of the scaffolding, breathless and triumphant. "Didn't your mothers ever teach you to keep both feet on solid ground?" he asked the dwarves working on the uppermost platform. "You look like a flock of nesting birds."

"Oh, don't go reminding me," Bofur said, leaning down to offer Fíli a hand. "The last time I climbed this high, we had wargs nipping at our heels. And the trees were on fire. And I fell off a cliff."

"There you go. It could always be worse," said Fíli. He glanced over the edge of the scaffolding, peering down to the entrance hall far below.

The whole towering corridor hummed with steady, noisy, well-organized work: dwarves hauling away broken stone, shoring up walls and strengthening battered columns, filling the long jagged cracks where the dragon's claws had ripped through tile and stone. Meanwhile, high above the clamor and commotion, Bofur and the rest of his work party had spent the day setting new crystals in the great lamps that had once lit the hall.  The crystals themselves were stored by the thousands in the mountains, secure in storerooms that Smaug had never seen or tampered with, and any stonemaster worth his wages could set them glowing, provided he had the right tools and compounds. But putting them in place—well, that was a bit trickier.

"Not a job for volunteers, is it?" Bofur had said when the foreman announced the day's work parties.

"No," said the foreman with a toothy grin. "Which is why Lord Balin gave me leave to draw lots from all qualified laborers not otherwise occupied. Guess whose name came up?"

Bofur had thoughtfully informed the foreman, who was in fact his second cousin once removed, that he was full of shit. "Besides," he said, "my name's not even on that roster.  Council members aren't assigned other duties."

"So now you're too good for ordinary work, is that it?" The foreman tutted in a way that Bofur had always found extremely irritating. "And you go about insulting family, to boot. What would your dear old ma say?"

"Oh, come off it.  If you need another pair of hands, you might just ask," Bofur said, relenting with reasonably good grace. "It'll be nice to do some honest work for a change."

Now, well into the day, Bofur and his fellows were still toiling away in their maze of scaffolding and ropes. Hauling the crystals into place demanded a good deal of shouting, sweat, and badly-strained nerves, but Fíli threw himself into the task at hand without any fuss or confusion.  For a few hours they made such good progress that there was no room for talk, and it was only after the foreman called an end of the morning's work that Fíli and Bofur could have a proper conversation.

"Good job we had you around," Bofur said as they made their way carefully down the scaffolding. "That last bit might've turned nasty, otherwise." 

One of their load-bearing ropes, stuck in a block and under heavy strain, had threatened to snap over open air; Fíli, closest to the trouble, had scrambled up and cleared the jam in time for them to lower it safely back down to solid ground. At the very least, he'd spared them an enormous amount of frustration, and in all likelihood he had saved the heads of some of the workers down below.

"It's a fine feeling, to be useful again," Fíli said as they made it to the ground at last. He jumped the last few feet, landing easily on the stone floor. "I can't even tell you how fine. And won't it be a sight for the long patrol, to come back and see the hall lit up like a midsummer day!"

Bofur grinned.  It was good to see the lad with some color in his cheeks. "You look better. Less, you know."

"Less like a walking corpse? Glad to hear it. Bilbo said the same. More politely, though." Fíli shrugged. "Hobbits."

"Hobbits," Bofur agreed. It was a common refrain these days.

They fell in with the stream of dwarves heading to the servants' mess hall, all of them dirty, tired, and hungry. The midday meal was unappetizing at best: preserved fish, old bread, and a cold gelatinous soup that (as was frequently remarked) did not ease hunger pangs so much as kill them stone dead. But food was food, and folk in the mountain had grown so used to scant rations that they only complained in an offhanded, desultory way.

"Ah, and here's another feast from the kitchens," Bofur said, ripping apart a piece of bread and dunking the pieces in his soup. "The lords sit down to dine. Should I eat the suckling pig first, or the veal, do you reckon?"

"I prefer seared trout, myself," said Fíli, straight-faced. "I suppose Bombur's saving that for the second course." He stretched his legs out underneath the rough wooden table and set upon his food with determination if not delight. "You remember what he kept saying during the siege, whenever Glóin complained?"

"Aye," Bofur said between bites, and then they chorused, imitating Bombur's best lecturing voice: "Eat your weevils; they're good for you."

How long had it been since Fíli laughed like that? Since Laketown? No, even longer ago than that. Sometime before the Misty Mountains, Bofur thought, and took advantage of Fíli's distraction to get a proper look at the lad.  Still much too skinny, but he could hardly be blamed for that, not when all the dwarves under the mountain were tightening their belts. His hair was neatly braided, and he looked cheerful enough, despite any number of long nights spent fretting over his wayward younger brother. Whatever sickness had troubled him since the battle, it had, by all appearances, vanished.

And good riddance, Bofur thought, as they scraped their bowls clean and trudged back to the entrance hall. It was looking to be a long, cruel winter, but Fíli had a knack for making even the bleakest days tolerable.

The foreman bawled orders, and then the afternoon's work began. Bofur sent his workers back up the scaffolding one at a time.  "Now, what's this?" he said, catching one of the younger lasses by the shoulder. "Forgetting something, are you?"

"I won't fall," she protested, but Bofur only scowled and sent her off to fetch a harness.

"If it's good enough for every dwarven miner as ever chipped stone," he said, "it's good enough for you."

"And for me, I suppose," Fíli said, making a face and following suit. "This was always my least favorite part of mining," he told the girl, in a confidential sort of way, as they both fastened buckles and adjusted straps. "But it's better than taking a step too far with nothing to catch you. No, pull those tighter. There, that's right."

She nodded, staring up at him with wide eyes. Soon they were back at the top of the long, narrow platform, and Fíli showed her how to tie a knot that wouldn't slip loose if she fell. Meanwhile, the foreman's assistant had secured the largest of the crystals, meant to hang in the very center of the hall, and waved up to Bofur to signal the all clear. "Haul away," Bofur called back. "Handsomely, now. Good. Now, let's see if we can—"

A flurry of curses broke out behind him. The load jerked to a halt, swinging precariously back and forth. Folk on the ground below scattered. "What's amiss?" he demanded.

"Jammed again," came the strained reply. "Just like before."

Bofur dragged a hand through his beard. The rope was from Laketown—old, damp from poor storage, scarcely usable—and the blocks were, if possible, even shoddier. "Damn. Can you lot dig in and hold while we sort this out?" A few grunts in the affirmative. "Right. That's all right. Fíli?"

Fíli nodded, considered for a moment, and then hauled himself up into the welter of wood and ropes. He couldn't quite reach the block. The wood creaked. He scrambled up another foot, balanced precariously. A little farther, farther—

"There. Got it." With one hand, he awkwardly set about clearing the jam, using the other to keep his balance. "Try it now."

"Haul away," Bofur ordered, and there was a general sigh of relief when the rope pulled through.  He ordered the dwarves to hold again while Fíli climbed back down. "You all right?" he said, puzzled, when Fíli didn't move. He was clinging to the ropes, silent, suddenly pale.

"Yes." But he sounded oddly distant.

"Fíli?" Bofur prompted, after a long, worrying pause. "Lad, if you need—"

"I just realized," he said. Still unmoving, his breathing strained. "I figured it out. I can—" he faltered, "—I can see it, almost. Goblins are attacking the supply caravan, up near Ered Mithrin."

Blank silence, and then a murmur of shock spread among those close enough to heard the words.

"And he _was_ stealing my strength," Fíli said, matter-of-factly.

Then his hands unclenched, as if life had suddenly left his body, and he pitched down into the open air below.

* * *

"They do it on purpose," Thorin said, words muffled, his head buried in his hands. "They must. There is no other reasonable explanation."

Bilbo, beside him, reached up and patted him on the shoulder. "And you were a cheerful, easygoing child, I suppose, who never got himself into trouble or worried his parents or set his baby sister's beard on fire."

Thorin looked up, eyes narrowed with suspicion. "And who told you that story, Mr. Baggins?"

"Balin," Bilbo said, delighted by the confirmation. "Oh, come, it's not as bad all that. A bruised rib, some nasty scrapes. The lad's had far worse."

Bilbo and Glóin had been with Varin in the council chambers, trying with growing frustration to find an elusive error in their account reckonings, when a messenger burst in, saying that Prince Fíli had fallen from a terrible height, and had been carried from the hall almost certainly dead. Bilbo rushed to the healer's wing, sick with worry, only to hear Fíli arguing with poor beleaguered Oín, saying that he was fine, that he was perfectly well, and that he needed to speak with Thorin straight away, Mahal curse it.

Working while attached to a sturdy scaffold didn't guarantee safety, but at least Fíli had only tumbled a few feet before he jerked to stop, unconscious but alive. ("And that," a badly shaken Bofur said, after they recovered Fíli, "is why you always wear a harness, lass.")

Thorin, meanwhile, was slumped against the wall outside, only half-dressed; he'd been training down in the practice courts when news of the accident reached him.  Oín had tolerated Thorin's presence for a few minutes, since Fíli had insisted on speaking to his uncle straight away, but no sooner had Fíli offered up his explanation than Thorin was banished from the room.  Thorin had obeyed with a great deal of grumbling.  Now he and Bilbo were sitting just outside the infirmary, leaving Fíli to endure the healers' censure on his own.

"You're brooding," Bilbo said, after a long stretch of frowning silence. 

"I do not brood," Thorin said.  He had the audacity to glower when Bilbo snorted. "If you must know, I was thinking of the first time I sent him to work.  They were tin mines: ill-maintained, dangerous.  Owned by men, of course.  It was before Ered Luin, and we needed the money.  I gave him a fearsome lecture.  Your life is in your hands, I said.  The day you feel safe is the day you make the mistake that gets you killed."

"Well, it seems as if he listened, and he's not too badly hurt.  Though I will be, if you crush my fingers."

Thorin looked down, as if he were surprised to see their hands folded together. He loosened his grip but didn't let go. "Is that better?"

"Perfect," said Bilbo, and indeed he felt rather inappropriately cheerful, given the circumstances. "Do you think he's right? About Kíli and the supply caravan?'

"Fíli is honest.  I've no reason to doubt him," Thorin said. "But I've never heard the like."

It would explain any number of small mysteries, if Kíli had somehow, without a hint of forethought or malice, been drawing on Fíli's strength whenever his own was insufficient to the task at hand. Kíli's recovery after the battle had been unsettlingly quick, while Fíli was a shadow of his bright, eager self. Kíli, restless and angry, rattled through the mountain while Fíli woke and slept in a fog of bone-deep exhaustion. And if Kíli had spent the last few days in Ered Mithrin with nothing to do but keep watch and complain about the cold, then Fíli's sudden, extraordinary return to himself made perfectly good sense.

At least Fíli was confident that Kíli was alive, and in reasonably good spirits. If nothing else, that was reason to hope that the supply caravan hadn't been taken or destroyed, though Thorin had nevertheless sent scouts out to search for any sign of either the caravan or the patrol.

"If only Gandalf were here, I daresay he could make sense of it," Bilbo said. The wizard had left before the first of the winter storms, offering no explanation for his sudden departure but promising that he would be back in early spring at the latest. According to Legolas, he had gone far south, to a place called Nan Curunír, to speak with the head of the White Council.

"If Gandalf were here," Thorin said, darkly, "he might soon have good reason to be somewhere else. If he worked this sorcery, and saw fit to keep it a secret, I will cut off his beard myself."

"It was a little strange," Bilbo said, thinking back to the eerie moment when Gandalf had awakened Kíli after the battle. "Gandalf standing over him, and chanting, and not answering when I spoke. But he would never hurt any of us on purpose, I'm certain. Perhaps it was a mistake."

Thorin shook his head. "Wizards don't make mistakes. They plot and scheme and keep secrets."

Bilbo thought that Thorin was rather overstating things, but there was no point in telling him so. At least they knew _what_ was happening to Fíli, even if they didn't understand why. Surely that was better than sitting around waiting for something terrible to happen. Surely that was better than wondering why one of their princes was dying, day by day, for no good reason.

We'll manage, Bilbo told himself. One way or another.

Thorin's hand was large, calloused, and reassuringly warm. When Bilbo interlaced their fingers, thinking less about what he was doing than about how nice it felt, Thorin stilled, then looked at him with a strange expression.

Bilbo, suddenly self-conscious, was on the verge of apologizing when Thorin lifted Bilbo's hand, brought it close, and pressed his chapped lips to the skin just below his knuckles.

"Oh," Bilbo said, and then: " _Oh_."

It wasn't as if he hadn't noticed how Thorin looked at him; it wasn't as if he hadn't thought, once or twice or a hundred times, about what it would be like to grab Thorin's shoulders and pull himself up just far enough to give him a proper kiss. But Thorin was—well. Thorin wasn't the most demonstrative of dwarves, was he? And he was a king, besides, with duties and obligations and no time for dalliances with wayward hobbits.

By the time Bilbo recovered from the shock, Thorin's eyebrows were furrowed and his mouth turned down in a small, tight frown.

"I, er," Bilbo said, scrambling to sort out his thoughts. He hated to be the reason that Thorin Oakenshield looked unhappy.

"Do you mind?" Thorin asked, very low.

Bilbo shook his head. "No," he said, as firmly as he could. "No. I don't. Only, you know, I was afraid of being a bother, and you have your duties, and I thought—well. I tried not to think of it, really."

"Perhaps we could think of it," Thorin suggested. He sounded uncertain, ill-at-ease. "Not right now.  But later, when things have settled down. If you're agreeable."

Bilbo's throat was very dry. He felt his heartbeat in every inch of his body, from his chest to his throat to the hand where Thorin's lips had pressed so gently. His mind circled the notion, distracted, unable to settle. Thorin had kissed him. Thorin had _kissed_ him.

He had to swallow twice before he could get the words out. "I'd like that," he said. 

The look on Thorin's face was like sunlight, gloriously bright, unfurling over the mountain on a clear day.  And then, just then, Fíli appeared in the archway in front of them, either escaped or set loose from the healers at last. 

"I knew it, uncle," he said triumphantly, too caught up in his own revelations to realize what he'd just interrupted. "Everyone whispering, saying that I was weak and sick, but I wasn't, I _wasn't_ , and when I get my hands on Kíli I'm going to make him pay for every single morning I dragged myself out of bed, and every day I could scarcely lift a sword—"

Thorin and Bilbo exchanged long-suffering glances.

"—an unholy _month_ , while he goes around throwing himself at walls and sparring at all hours of the night—"

"If you do your brother an injury," said Thorin, "you will most certainly be the one writing the letter explaining matters to your mother."

Fíli subsided, but only for a moment.  "But I wasn't weak, uncle," he said, looking more like himself than he had since they'd first come to the mountain. "I wasn't."

Thorin's voice was gruff and unmistakably fond when he said: "I never thought you were."

No one else in the mountain knew exactly what happened that day. Fíli's accident kept the gossips busy, and speculation ranged from a wasting sickness ("he hasn't been right for weeks, I tell you") to a sudden premonition of his brother's death ("the caravan lost, and no food for us, or for Dale neither") to a simple snapped rope ("what d'you expect, buying supplies off the Lakemen? Shoddy workmanship, that's men all over"). But there was no disguising the buoyant mood that radiated outward from the king and his closest companions, and the speculation soon took a more hopeful tone: something good must be coming, folk said, if King Thorin could be heard whistling in the halls. Spirits rose still further when Thorin's scouts returned with word that the caravan was only three days away from Erebor.

The return of the long patrol took on a strange, heightened significance. The habitable parts of the mountain began to feel like a house waiting, with baited breath, for long-expected company to call. Work in the entrance hall reached a feverish pitch. "Wait 'til they see," Bofur said gleefully, after the last of the lights went up in the entrance hall. On cloudless days, sunshine filtered through high, narrow windows cut deep into the rock, pooling on battered stone like water. At night the crystals shone pure and clear, and shadows of the columns draped the walls and floor, a maze of light and dark.

Better and better. Old tapestries, safe for centuries in dark cool storerooms, were rediscovered and hung in pride of place on the walls. Nori found a particularly handsome set of dinnerware while snooping in one of the smaller treasury rooms, and distributed them around the commons by way of a joke. When Glóin complained, he grinned outrageously and said, "But now we can eat our gruel and stale bread on proper silver, see?"

When the patrol came to the gates at last, the supply caravan in tow, it seemed as if every dwarf in the mountain had assembled to greet them, and the noise was stupendous. Bilbo immediately sought out the caravan's leader, a captain in Dain's guard, to see about getting some food down to Dale—no doubt the city sentries had seen the caravan enter the mountain, and if they delayed too long there would certainly be riots—while Dwalin gave Thorin his report and Fíli accosted his brother with a mixture of delight and indignation.

"We need to have a talk, you enormous lunk," Fíli said, catching Kíli in a tight embrace and kissing him on the forehead.

"Watch it," Kíli said, breathlessly. The general, undisguised delight at the patrol's return had done a great deal to bolster Kíli's mood, and he tolerated his brother's greeting, which at least had the virtue of long familiarity, with reasonably good grace. "You'll crush him."

"What?" Fíli pulled back, baffled, but then he caught sight on the small furry bundle tucked under Kíli's arm. "Oh, don't tell me."

"A goblin had him," Kíli said defensively. "Probably going to eat him, but I couldn't just leave him to die, could I?"

" _You_ couldn't. You never can," said Fíli, and held out a hand. "Can I?"

With slight reluctance, Kíli gave him the wolf pup. "He's quiet, and he never bites. Or at least he never bites me; he almost took a chunk out of Dwalin's arm a few days ago. I guess he likes you, too."

"Seems so." Fíli gave the small creature a finger to sniff, and then offered it a scratch under the chin. "I don't suppose you have a plan for dealing with uncle?"

Kíli shrugged. "We'll keep him in our quarters. I'll hunt to feed him."

Fíli considered telling his brother that keeping a wolf was almost certainly a very different proposition than keeping dogs, that neither of them had the first idea how to manage it, and that there was no point in getting attached if the creature turned vicious and had to be killed. But Kíli had an all-too-familiar spark in his eyes, and Fíli knew that nothing he said would do any good. In the end, all he offered was an offhanded comment about how strange it was for a goblin to keep a live animal. "It's not as if they have pets, is it? Wargs, maybe, but not wolves."

"I didn't take the time to ask," Kíli said, and then of course conversation turned to the skirmish. He was in such a good mood that Fíli was loath to start their fighting again. There would be a feast that night, with meat and cheese and ale, and spirits running high enough for song. It had been so long since they had any reason for cheer.

Other matters could wait for the morning, Fíli decided. For now he had his brother, and folk had decent food to eat. The cooking fires were already roaring in the kitchens. What more could anyone want?


	13. Steady as the Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, BotFA. That was a thing that happened. 
> 
> I've been editing the earlier chapters of this fic to include some small pieces of characterization and plot from both Dos and BotFA (Bard's kids, details about Tauriel, etc.) but there's a lot of stuff I won't be able to reconcile; I hope that's okay with everyone!

The celebration sparked by the supply caravan's long-awaited arrival was as wild and boisterous as last few months had been austere. Soon every dwarf in the mountain, except those unfortunate enough to be on guard duty, had crowded into the servant's mess hall. Nori and Óin's distillery supplied the drink, of uncertain quality but undeniably strong, and if the food was scant by the standards of the Blue Mountains or the Iron Hills, it seemed very fine indeed compared to barley gruel and old salted fish.

The soldiers that Dain had sent along with the caravan were already well-known to most of the dwarves now living in Erebor. They were welcomed so handsomely to the mountain, and with so much gratitude, that some of them might have been tempted to stay regardless of the attendant hardships. Kíli, meanwhile, was hailed as a hero, and his soldiers plied him with drink all night. He withstood it astonishingly well, draining mug after mug without the slightest ill effect. Fíli, by contrast, grew paler and more unsteady as the night wore on, though he drank but little, and he finally vanished from the celebrations in the small hours of the morning. Kíli followed after him, despite a host of protests.

"You're not getting off that easy, little prince," Isda called over the general clamor when he tried to slip away. On the road back to Erebor they had taken to sparring together after they set up camp in the evenings; if nothing else, they were well-suited with swords in hand. "Not with the night so young!"

"Middle-aged, at least," Kíli said, draining one last mug and leaving it at the table. His speech wasn't even slurred, though he'd been outpacing larger, sturdier dwarves all night, and there was an unpleasant edge to his words; Kíli could be sharp when he wanted to. He offered her a mocking bow. "And so it's only fair that I leave it to my elders."

"Don't get uppity with me," Isda said. "I'll knock your head in, see if I won't.  But off you go, youngster, if it's your bedtime."

Dwalin, sitting nearby with an arm slung over Thorin's shoulders, watched Kíli take his leave. "Tell me you've some notion what's wrong with our lads.  It's like the villages again, or even before."

"Fíli thinks that he knows," Thorin said. He kept his voice down, too, although no one could possibly have heard them amid the general revelry. Folk had to shout to be heard across a table.   "He says that there is a strange bond between them. That Kíli has been stealing his strength."

"On purpose? Never in life." It was a sign of their unspoken fears—that Fíli might die for reasons they didn't understand and couldn't fight—that a dwarf as solid and skeptical as Dwalin would even consider such a wild idea.

"I know. But you remember the winter that Kíli was born," Thorin said.  "If it was an accident, some sort of spell or mischief, and neither of them understood what was happening—perhaps.  Bilbo said that Gandalf wasn't entirely himself when he woke Kíli after the battle."

"Wizards," Dwalin said sourly. He took a swig from his mug to wash the taste from his mouth, but whatever else he was going to say, it was forgotten when he saw Varin working his way through the crowd toward them, and instead he said: "Watch your back. The buzzard's behind you and coming up quick."

It wasn't that Dwalin didn't respect his cousin, who was loyal and proud and undeniably clever when it came to bureaucracy and politics. It was just that every time Dwalin heard Varin talk about the old families, and the old bloodlines, and the way that Thrór had managed things in—Mahal help them—the _old days_ , all he could think was: and where were you at the gates of Moria? Where were you when our princes were starving, and our folk begging for work? Where were you when Thorin Oakenshield said that he was going home at last, and asked who would follow him east? If Varin looked down his nose at the folk who had answered Thorin's call, that was his business. But Dwalin wasn't about to think well of him for it.

Thorin hunched his shoulders, as if that would make him a smaller target in the crowd. "He wants to talk about Dale. Tonight of all nights, I swear by the Maker—" 

Glóin, Varin, and Bilbo had spent the better part of a week sorting through the account books, and they'd found a dizzying number of errors, all of them in Dale's favor. The trick was untangling fraud from plain incompetence.  The accounts were collected and copied over a half-dozen times before they came to rest in Glóin's hands, and Erebor's small collection of scribes, most untrained and all overworked, were by no means infallible. Varin, who had been convinced all along that the folk of Laketown weren't to be trusted, and that Bard in particular was a jumped-up fisherman ("a bargeman," Bilbo always interrupted, "he was a _bargeman_ ") who ought to be put in his place, wasted no time insisting that the king issue a formal accusation. But Thorin wasn't about to accuse anyone without proof, not even Bard of Laketown.  He could never now think of betrayal without remembering the battlements, and of words that couldn't be unsaid. _Take him, if you wish him to live, and no friendship of mine goes with him._

Perhaps in answer to Thorin's prayer, Varin missed them in the crowd and headed off in the wrong direction. Thorin breathed a very unkingly sigh of relief.  "I promised Bilbo I wouldn't make any decisions about Dale before the meeting tomorrow," he said, when Varin was safely out of sight. "He still insists that Bard is reliable, and that there's been some mistake. He's too trusting by half."

Dwalin grinned. "So you've been talking things over with the hobbit. Glad to hear it. Are you own affairs coming along, then?" The words were inoffensive enough, but his tone was so lascivious that Thorin—still something of a prude, according to Dwalin, even after all his years in exile—nearly spat out an unlucky mouthful of ale.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said.

Just then, in a feat of spectacularly bad timing, Bilbo appeared at their table, breathless and red-cheeked and more than slightly tipsy, saying, "Oh, Thorin, there are you are. Varin's on the prowl, did you know? I've been looking all over to warn you—"

Thorin almost knocked Dwalin off the bench in his haste to move over and give Bilbo a place to sit, and Dwalin made a choked noise before almost falling off of his own accord in a fit of barely-stifled laughter.

"What's so funny?" Bilbo asked, tucking himself against Thorin's side and looking at the two of them bemusedly.

"Nothing, nothing," Thorin said.  He rammed an elbow into Dwalin's ribcage when Dwalin opened his mouth to offer his own perspective on the situation.

The rest of the night slipped away in a warm, comfortable haze, interrupted only by one or two brawls—"High spirits," Thorin said, when Bilbo flinched at the flurry of shouts and crashes behind them—and at last by the watery sun, slipping in through the long, narrow windows that brought light and fresh air to the lower halls.

Soon after daybreak, Thorin stood. Tradition dictated that the king or lord's departure marked the end of any revelry, and he was loath to halt the first happy night that Erebor had seen since its recovery; it was better than a dozen supply caravans for bolstering spirits. But there was to be a council meeting late in the morning, and then the rest of the day's work to attend to. Besides, they were almost out of alcohol, much to Nori's dismay, and it would be far better if folk stumbled to bed to nurse their aching heads in something close to peace and quiet.

Bilbo, who had stubbornly refused to leave before Thorin, was snoring gently at his side.   "Up you get," Thorin said, tugging the bleary-eyed hobbit to his feet.

"Wasn't sleeping," Bilbo said, automatically. He staggered, losing his balance when he tried to take a step, but Thorin caught him.

"You haven't been trying to keep up with us all night, have you?" Thorin said, looking at Bilbo with concern.

"What do you mean, trying? I can hold my liquor every bit as well as you, Thorin Oakenshield."

"Good," Thorin said, not even remotely in a mood to argue with him. "We can hold each other up, then; my quarters are closest."

Bilbo looked up at him suspiciously. "Are you trying to seduce me?"

Thorin, who was supporting most of Bilbo's weight, almost dropped him in shock. Did Bilbo think so little of him, to suspect that Thorin would try to trick him into bed when they were both sodden with drink? If he'd had his wits about him, he might have remembered that _seduce_ was one of those unfortunate, untranslatable words; there was no precise Khuzdul equivalent, because seduction hinted at trickery and persuasion, even outright deceit: something that no decent dwarf would ever associate with matters of the heart. But Thorin was in no state to be reasonable, and somewhere beneath his wounded pride was the ache of desire. Bilbo was soft and warm at his side, and despite everything, he'd made it clear that he was amenable to the idea—

"Oh. That's all right, then," Bilbo said, obviously relieved.

—or perhaps not.

They made the rest of the brief journey to his quarters in silence. Thorin regretted the careless suggestion, but he could scarcely retract it. When they arrived, Bilbo crawled into Thorin's bed fully clothed, said a sleepy "Good night—or good morning, I suppose—" and was asleep again within minutes.

For a while, Thorin wondered if he ought to sleep on the stone floor, but his back and ribs protested the idea vehemently, and in the end he settled down on the very edge of his bed, as far away from Bilbo as he could manage. Eventually he drifted off to a few unsettled hours of rest. His last thought before he fell asleep was that if he wrongly accused Bard of crimes against his kingdom, Bilbo would hold it over his head for the rest of his life.

* * *

Some hours later, down a hallway and on the opposite side of the royal quarters, Fíli woke comfortable and well-rested. That alone made him suspicious. He shifted a little, waiting for the aches and splintering pains that had become his constant companions to realize their mistake and settle back under his skin. Nothing happened. His blankets, piled over the flat stone of his bed, were heavy and warm. His pillow, which was in fact an old coat wrapped around a pile of rags, tempted him with the promise of another few hours of sleep.  

He didn't hurt. Not even a little.

It was too good to be true. Given how much Kíli had drunk last night, Fíli had expected to wake up with the most undeserved hangover in history, if nothing else. He sat up, moving slowly and carefully, and then got to his feet; his muscles obeyed him cheerfully and without complaint. When he reached down to grab a shirt from the small pile of clothes on the floor, he didn't even feel dizzy or lightheaded.

A sudden, awful thought occurred to him. In a few hasty strides he had crossed the room to look through the archway that separated his half of the room from Kíli's. But Kíli was still there, curled up in bed, his unfortunate new pet huddled beside him. In some ways he and the wolf were a matched set, both dark and young and motionless but for their breathing, apparently sound asleep. Perhaps that was the reason that Fíli felt so ordinary; Kíli wasn't awake to get into fights, drill to excess, or work beyond his limits. Fíli was just about to turn around leave Kíli to his rest when the blankets rustled and Kíli twisted around to face him.

"Stay for just a minute, would you?' he said, voice tight.

Careful not to disturb Khahûl, lest his unexpectedly painless morning end with a small, terrified animal digging its teeth into his hand, Fíli settled down on the edge of the bed. When he put a hand on Kíli's shoulder, Kíli jerked back, away from Fíli and closer to the wall.   "Sorry," he muttered, voice muffled as he buried his face in blankets. "Sorry, sorry—"

"Don't be," Fíli said. He didn't try to touch him again. "Come on, blackbird.  It's all right."

 _Blackbird_ had been their mother's name for Kíli when he was younger; she hadn't used it in years, but sometimes Fíli did. Kíli always made a great show of hating the name: _I'm not a baby,_ he used to say, until he realized how petulant that sounded and starting putting Fíli in headlocks instead. But this time he only shuddered and moved further away until he was pressed against the wall. "Do you want me to leave?" Fíli asked, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. They both had nightmares sometimes, but this was something else.

"No! No, I just—I don't want to hurt you, but I don't know how. I'm sorry."

Fíli heroically repressed his first response, which was a string of curses that even Dwalin would have been impressed by. He should have known that Kíli would figure it out on his own, given half a chance. They'd never been good at keeping secrets from each other.  So much for good intentions.  He should have told Kíli the moment he came back from patrol. 

"When did you realize?" he asked. 

"Last night, at the end of the party. Even I can't hold my drink that well, but you were sick without touching a drop. You got sicker the more I had. And then Isda was talking with her brother, and he said that you'd known about the fight with the goblins while it was happening. That you'd felt it. And then I figured it out. Has it—" he bit at his lower lip, already cracked and bleeding— "Has it been my fault the entire time? Ever since the battle?"

"Not all of it," Fíli said. But the lie didn't sound convincing, not even to him. He tried another tack. "Look, whatever it is—an enchantment, a curse, I don't know—it's nothing you did. Thorin thinks it was wizardry, that Gandalf put a spell on us. And it hasn’t been as bad as all that. I was only tired, that's all."

"I thought you were dying," Kíli said. He bit out each word like it hurt to speak. "So did Thorin. You almost _did_ die, I heard about it, you almost fell a hundred feet and split your head open because I was off on patrol, pretending that nothing had changed, that I could still fight like before. And I couldn't. I thought I was strong, but it wasn't my strength at all, it was yours—"

"So now you're keeping your hangover all to yourself?" Fíli said, cutting him off. Whatever misery Kíli had caused him, it had been entirely accidental. All the guilt in the world wouldn't do either of them the first bit of good, and hearing his brother sound so low and bitter was a misery in itself. "That's plain selfishness. What would mama say?"

He picked a sleepy, confused Khahûl up and plopped him down on Kíli's stomach before settling down more comfortably on the bed.   Kíli didn't smile, but he sat up a little. When Khahûl nudged him, he automatically began petting him; Khahûl, who was unsettlingly well-mannered where his new master was concerned, draped himself over Kíli's lap. He didn't quite fit, even though he was skinny as a rail, but he only let out a small sigh and went back to sleep.

"What've you been feeding him?" Fíli asked.

"Gruel. Well, barley and milk, mostly," Kíli said, gratefully latching on to the change of subject. "I offered him scraps of meat, but he's not interested. It's strange. From his size, I would have put him at three months, but he's acting like an unweaned pup."

"A pup with mûmak feet.   He'll be taller than you if he ever grows into them." Khahûl's paws were so large that he tripped over them when he walked, and his head was, if possible, even more disproportionate to his half-starved frame. If a particularly talentless artist had been commissioned to sculpt a wolf based on a child's description of the shadowy creature that haunted his nightmares, the resulting sculpture might have looked more or less like poor Khahûl.

Kíli, true to form, was already hopelessly devoted. Which reminded Fíli of something else that might brighten his brother's spirits: "When we go to council, remind Ori to give you your letters. You've had two since you left on patrol, sent along with the timber shipments from Mirkwood. If you write back, you should ask her if she's ever heard of anything like—" Fíli gestured at the space between them, as if the bond was a piece of string tying them together. "Us."

Kíli shook his head. It seemed he was too distracted, or too sick to his stomach, to remember that he was supposed to turn defensive and embarrassed whenever Tauriel came up in conversation. "I don't think so. She doesn't have much to do with elf-magic, except for concealment and a little bit of healing."

"And there's no knowing how soon Gandalf will be back," Fíli pointed out, "so we might as well learn to live with it.  Besides," he said, when Kíli still looked unconvinced, "you've always been a lightweight. Will I even notice your headache?"

"This headache," said Kíli, with a touch of his old braggadocio, "would fell a mountain troll."

Fíli scoffed. "I doubt it."

The words were barely out of his mouth before he was struck by a starburst of pain and nausea that literally knocked him flat on his back. "Sorry, sorry!" He dimly heard Kíli's frantic voice above him. "Here, just let me—"

The pain didn't vanish, but it eased enough that Fíli could open his eyes without being sick. "Right," he said. "I'll give you this one." His mouth was as dry as old stone, and his head pounded in time with his heartbeat. "At least one mountain troll. Maybe two."

"I told you," said Kíli, looking anxious. "Is this all right? I think we have about half and half."

Whatever outrageous stories Fíli told about his younger years, he rarely drank to excess, in large part because he loathed hangovers. His simple, blessedly painless morning was ruined, and at some point in the last minute or so, despite his best efforts, Khahûl had taken fright and given him a nasty swipe across the forearm.

"Come on," he said, feeling better than he had in months. Finally, _finally_ , he had his brother back. "Get up and get dressed. We're going exploring."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In a drunken New Year's haze, I swore to myself that I would write 500 words every day, and post new chapters at least every three weeks until this fic is done. I'll, uh, see how that goes. In that spirit, the second half of this chapter should be up soon. In the meantime, please drop by [ my tumblr](http://www.basilandtheblues.tumblr.com) to say hello, chat about fandom, and/or guilt me into keeping my ill-considered promises!


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